Europe

The European Parliament signed off on sweeping guidelines for Internet regulation, including prohibiting SPAM and the use of cookies without the explicit permission from Web surfers.  The directive calls for an "opt-in" system for e-mails that requires marketers to receive permission from recipients before they make unsolicited commercial pitches. Although the directive has been passed to each EU member, it will likely take some time for it to lead to laws in all member countries.

United States 

With the CAN-SPAM ACT of 2003, the United States has finally produced national legislation governing email marketing practices. We are pleased that standards are being established and hope the law will reduce spam and encourage good behavior among legitimate marketers. Interestingly the requirements of the law start to approach the best practices of email marketing that generate highly qualified sales leads.

What Does This Mean for Your Marketing Efforts?

It is important to understand how to prepare your company to properly comply with new regulations, and to make sure you continue to responsibly market in this new marketplace environment.   No matter what, responsible marketing using the Internet will continue to be one of the most opportunistic and cost effective areas for marketing success.

Make "Permission" Part of All Your Marketing

No current or proposed legislation affects your ability to market to people who have given you their permission. You do, however, as a normal part of business, need to make the "permission" part of your marketing more obvious.  This should be done in contracts, web site registrations, etc., as a normal course of your business dealings. 

VisualME can help you do this very easily, and automatically keep track of who has provided their permission, and how and when they did it.  VisualME's automatic subscription feature, as an example, encourages subscriptions and other types of "opt-ins" from your web site, using a "double opt-in" process, completely automating this part of proposed legislative compliance. 

Make "Opts Outs" Easy to Use and Make Them Work

VisualME helps you manage and control all your opt-outs, making sure you never accidentally mail to someone who has requested you not.  When someone gets a communication generated from VisualME, one click connects them to your web site, and one more click confirms the opt out.

VisualME automatically maintains your opt-out list, and never lets you mail to someone accidentally.  It will also notify others in your company when opt outs occur, making sure your entire organization understands the importance of respecting this request.

Use External Lists to Quickly Find New Prospects

Continue to email using external list sources, like magazines or clubs, where people have indicated that they wish to receive periodic offers about topics of interest. These lists have always been the highest response rate generators, and we actively encourage their use with VisualME.  VisualME also lets you use responses to develop your own internal "success lists", via dynamic web registration and surveys.    

VisualME also allows you to keep these outside list sources carefully synchronized with internal opt-out lists.  VisualME will automatically produce a file to the mailing house to avoid mailing to people who have opted out from other campaigns. Keeping you off the SPAM lists is the primary objective of this feature, and it's a key feature of VisualME.  

Completely Eliminate Anonymous Mailings

Don't ever use anonymous email - e.g. email with a valid return address and signed by your company, or better yet, a person at your company.  New legislation specifically addresses anonymous mailings, and its something we never do or recommend.  When you mail, carefully select your target audience, clearly focus your message, and sign each and every communication with your company name and contact.  VisualME can help you make sure this happens every time.

Disclose All Cookies

VisualME uses selected cookie information to customize the browsing experience for web site visitors, and to more carefully focus future offers, much like many of the industry giant book publishers.   These cookies are not, however, a required part of the product, and can be eliminated by a simple request by the user.  This can be disclosed automatically as a part of any VisualME marketing campaign, and fully complies with all proposed directives.

Automating Responsible Permission Based Marketing

Automating and facilitating responsible permission based marketing is the key objective and benefit of VisualME.  It helps you:

• Clearly focus messages, and target them at carefully selected, and interested, audiences; 
• Automatically provide easy opt-outs; 
• Build internal "opt-in" lists automatically, from a variety of sources; 
• Better communicate with existing customer communities and new prospect communities;
• Easily comply with all new legislation.   

All key features of responsible marketing, and all made easier with VisualME.

Remember, getting the bad people out of the email business is good for the rest of us.