Anti-Spam Policy

Following the law isn't enough - it's permission that really matters

What email addresses are OK?

To send email to anyone through Email Marketing Studio, you must have clearly obtained their permission. This could be done in a number of ways:

• Opted in from your site

  Each subscriber opted in from your own web site where you explained when and what you'd be contacting them about.

• Purchased a product from you

  This person is a customer that purchased from you within the last 2 years.

• Handed you their business card at a trade show or other event knowing you'd contact them

  If you told the card owner you would be in contact, you have permission. If you did not suggest either with a sign or verbally that you would be contacting them, you do not have permission.

• They completed an offline form and indicated they wanted to be emailed

  If someone completes an offline form like a survey or enters a competition, you can only contact them if it was explained to them that they would be contacted by email AND they ticked a box indicating they would like to be contacted.

Basically, you can only ever email anyone who has clearly given you permission to email them specifically about the subject you're contacting them about.

What emails addresses are NOT OK?

Anything outside the examples above doesn't equal permission in our eyes, but here are some examples to make sure we're crystal clear. By using Email Marketing Studio, you agree not to import or send to any email address which:

• You haven't emailed the recipient's address for more than 2 years

  Permission doesn't age well. Even if you got their permission legitimately, they won't remember giving it to you. If you haven't sent something to that address in the last 2 years, you can't start now.

• You obtained the email addresses from a third party

  Whether you purchased a list, were provided one by a partner or bought a bankrupt competitor's customer list, those people never gave YOU permission to email them and they will consider your email spam. No matter the claims of the source of this list, you cannot email them with our software.

• You scraped or "copy and pasted" the addresses from the Internet

  Just because people publish their email address doesn't mean they want to hear from you.

Sure, some of these people might have given you their email address, but what's missing is your permission to email them commercial messages. Blasting promotional emails to any of these people won't be effective and will more than likely see your email marked as spam by many of your recipients.

How will we know if you don't have permission

Email Marketing Studio has numerous layers of approval and monitoring to ensure you comply with our anti-spam policy. Here's a few of them:

1. Our software is directly integrated into the spam reporting systems for some of the biggest ISP's like Hotmail and AOL. If you don't have permission and someone marks your campaign as spam, we'll know about it the moment that button is pressed. If you receive a complaint rate greater than 0.25% of all recipients (that's 25 complaints for every 10,000 recipients) your account will be terminated. This is a generous figure that takes into account false spam reports.
2. Our team verifies all large lists imported into our software. Until we've given it the all clear, you can't send to it.
3. We monitor blacklists and our abuse accounts all day every day. We can pinpoint who is causing us delivery problems or attracting complaints very easily.

If we do discover that you're emailing people without their permission, we will terminate your account immediately. In the end, it's really common sense. Take off your marketing hat and put yourself in your recipient's shoes. If they don't recognize who you are or aren't interested in what you're sending, they'll think you're a spammer. It's that simple.