Loosely defined email activities need to be examined carefully.
If email is the Internet's "killer app," then surveys could quite possibly be email's "killer app."
I've been involved with email surveys for several years now and their performance still amazes me. It's not uncommon for today's email survey to generate double-digit completion rates, much less click-through rates (provided you build/manage your list well). It's a fast and cost effective research tool to boot. Yet, this "app" could get killed if some survey senders don't get with generally accepted email marketing best practices soon.
Last January, Congress enacted the "Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act of 2003" (CAN-SPAM) which, interestingly, did not exempt any particular group. In the past, it was common to see certain entities such as nonprofits, charitable institutions and political organizations explicitly omitted from such types of legislation.
Despite this, some groups are reading the law and interpreting it as not pertaining to them. For example, several large survey firms have pointed out that the phrase "commercial electronic mail" alone should exempt them, as their messages are more for fact finding than commercial purposes. But review the Act's definition and you'll find that any email message that is simply promoting a Web site can be considered commercial.
So which is the correct interpretation? Consult your legal counsel.
However, regardless of how that conversation goes, it is my opinion that following the law is just as critical for non-commercial mailers as it is for commercial mailers.
For the most part, CAN-SPAM is all about transparency and disclosure. It requires senders to:
- Not falsify headers.
- Use a functional return email address as well as opt-out mechanism and to honor them in a timely fashion.
- Build and maintain a "do-not-email" file of such people and to purge against it when renting a third-party file.
- Not use deceptive or misleading language.
- List a postal address.
All of these items represent the box-standard best practices for any form of, shall we say, "professional" email. Such practices should not be adopted solely by those selling products, but for any type of business that employs the media to further their cause.
What if the non-commercial mailers refuse to adopt commercial email's best practices? Well, again, check with your legal counsel before making that decision. But consider these two scenarios that could quite possibly happen as a result:
- Your stellar response starts to tank because legitimate commercial email has trained email recipients that all legitimate email has the above attributes. Therefore, your email is deleted because it doesn't look legitimate.
- Spammers catch wind that surveys fly under the radar more easily and adopt a "selling under the guise of surveys" approach, thus flooding the channel with surveys.
When I worked on the Interactive Advertising Bureau's email marketing pledge and the Association of Internet Marketing's E-mail Delivery best practices, neither committee gave a minute's thought to drawing lines between commercial and non-commercial mailers. It was simply the respectable mailers and everyone else. It seems that Congress may have also constructed CAN-SPAM in that same mindset. CAN-SPAM isn't about splitting hairs. It's about how respectable businesses use email.
Take it from me: Surveys are, without question, one of the best uses of email marketing. By following email's best practices, we can keep it that way for a long time to come.
Michael Mayor is president and chief operating officer of NetCreations which recently launched its email sampling division, SurveyDirect. He is an 18-year veteran of direct marketing and a recognized pioneer of email marketing. He has pioneered many of the email marketing industry's standards and best practices. Mayor is a leading advocate of privacy, is a frequent speaker at industry functions, and is chairman for the Interactive Advertising Bureau's Email Committee.