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Under current UK/EU legislation the following paragraphs set out
the legal position in regard to email marketing. You should be aware that different rules apply to emailing businesses as opposed to consumers. If in doubt as to the legality of any mailing you should consult a specialist lawyer. |
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| Business to consumer mailings |
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| Promotional mailings to consumers are strictly governed and here the rules are very simple. It is not permissible to send unsolicited marketing emails to consumers unless you have express permission to do so. Such permission is normally granted by the recipient having opted in to receive emails from you. This ‘permission’ can be either direct, or it may be via a third party. Instances of 3rd party permissions can be where a consumer has subscribed to a magazine and at the same time agreed to receive emails from selected businesses to whom the publisher may have ‘sold or rented’ his database. Another example is where the consumer has joined an online competition line with one of the conditions for free competition entry being that the consumer must agree to receive email marketing information from other parties to whom the competition organisers have rented their lists. |
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| In the above instances it is generally safe to work with such lists, but again it is best to use the two part flyer unless you are a major household brand and unlikely to offend anyone with an unsolicited mailing. |
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| Be very wary of renting or purchasing email lists from little known list brokers or from sources such as eBay. The vendors of such lists will claim that the lists are permission based but in many cases they are simply harvested addresses and using them for your consumer mailings may result in prosecution and having your website / email addresses blocked for accusations of spamming. It is not a defence to say that you genuinely believed the list to be opt-in when you acquired it cheaply from the sources referred to. For example, at the time of writing there are a number of vendors on
www.ebay.co.uk who are offering: |
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1 million opt-in UK email addresses PLUS free updates. All for £4.99 |
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1 billion (the mind boggles!) email addresses on DVD for £32.99. The vendor even claims that all these addresses are real, valid, up to date, categorised and opt-in. “All 1 billion (that’s 1,000 million) recipients have agreed to accept promotional emails – your emails” he extols!!! |
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| Business to business mailings |
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| Here the news is better. Under current legislation it is permissible to email marketing messages to business addresses unless the recipient has specifically requested that he/she does not wish to receive further emails from you. If after receiving such a request you continue to mail them you are then committing an offence and are potentially liable to be fined – which in theory could be as much as £5,000 per offence. Generally, business addresses are identified as being
xxx@abc.co.uk, or something similar. An address such as
john@aol.com is not considered to be a business address – even though some smaller businesses use AOL addresses. Certainly free email addresses such as
bill@hotmail.com or
mary@gmail.com are not considered legitimate businesses for the purpose of email promotions. |
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| Be aware also that while the law is one thing, being accused of spamming and having your site taken down and being blacklisted by the ISPs is another. So just because the law says you can send unsolicited commercial emails subject to the recipient being able to opt out, for the sake of your business you should always play safe and stay with proven opt-in email addresses using the same criteria as above unless you are using the two step approach referred to. You should only disclose your web and email address when you have received a specific request for an information package. |
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