Best Practices for Small, Medium and Large Business Email Marketers

In an effort to reduce the amount of spam consumers receive daily, McAfee Security’s spam prevention experts along with other anti-spam and privacy organizations developed the following best practices for email marketers to follow:

• Use opt-in methods to build your mailing lists. If you do not have a prior and relevant business relationship with your intended recipients, ask for their permission before you send. As an added precaution, also consider asking them to confirm their e-mail address. You'll wind up with a high quality list of recipients who are receptive to your message.
• Fully disclose relevant data sharing practices at the point of collection. If you would like the option to share personally identifiable information with third parties, especially for marketing purposes or for appends, clearly and conspicuously disclose this when obtaining consent.
• All commercial email subject lines will be "honest and truthful." Do not engage in “bait and switch” techniques to entice consumers to click.
• All claims stated in the commercial email will be honest and truthful. Commercial email senders will adhere to accepted advertising guiding principles (such as the Better Business Bureau’s Code of Advertising) and engage in truthful advertising. They should not make deceptive or misleading representations or omit material facts.
• All commercial email will clearly indicate the identity of the product/service provider. This reduces consumer confusion, adds legitimacy to the message, and contributes to long-term trust in the medium.
• All disclaimers and disclosures must be clear and conspicuous to consumers. Consumers must be able to notice, read or hear, and understand the information. A disclaimer or disclosure is not enough to remedy a false or deceptive claim.
• An unsubscribe method will be presented noticeably in every commercial email message sent.
  • A simple online method will be presented that does not require entering additional information, such as other personally identifiable information.
  • The unsubscribe request will be processed within five (5) business days.
  • Method should be functional for at least 30 days after mailing.
  • The unsubscribe policy will be prominently displayed and will include instructions on how consumers can remove their email address from future mailings.
  • Company should not sell or lease the contact information of a consumer that has unsubscribed.
  • Requests to unsubscribe are valid indefinitely, until the consumer overrides this preference with a new solicitation for contact (consent) or initiates a new business relationship.
• Senders will practice thorough list maintenance including the timely processing of bounces and removal of hard bounces.
• All commercial email content will be suitable for readers of all ages. No commercial email will be sent out containing nudity, profanity and other language and images of a disturbing and offensive nature unless content of this nature is specifically solicited.
• Commercial email senders will refrain from using “dictionary attacks” as an email solicitation method. Programs that use “dictionary attacks” utilize technologies to predict the existence of email addresses in order to blast email to those addresses. Since these programs are automated and consumer consent was never obtained.
• Commercial email senders will refrain from using lists that have been “harvested” using questionable means. These are lists that are gathered by special programs that search for email addresses in popular Web sites, chat rooms, etc. Most of these addresses are compiled without the knowledge or consent of the email address owner.
• Commercial email senders will use their legitimately acquired lists for their original purpose. Companies who purchased a fully verified opt-in list(s) must examine the terms and conditions under which the addresses were originally compiled and determine that all recipients have in fact opted-in to the type of mailing list the buyer intends to operate.