Email Marketing Compliance Best Practices

Staying Emma Email Marketing "compliant" simply means that you follow a set of guidelines and best practices in a few important areas of e-marketing. Failure to follow these guidelines could result in your Email Marketing account being "flagged".

What does it mean if I have a "flagged" account?

  • Flagged simply means that the Email Marketing monitoring tools noticed an issue and alerted our Compliance Team. When this occurs, a member of our team will contact you to go over and resolve the issue. The reasons for the flag can vary, from an unusually high bounce rate in a mailing to an issue with an unauthenticated domain.
  • Unless otherwise indicated, your sending status will be unaffected by the flag (that is, you'll still be able to send out automated campaigns and one-time mailings). Extreme cases can result in a suspended account, where sending is frozen (including automated campaigns).
  • Flagged accounts are a problem because they can have a substantial, negative impact on the deliverability of future campaigns and can even adversely affect your sender reputation.
  • It's best to make sure you are following the guidelines in this article now to avoid any potential future disruptions.

So how do I stay compliant?

Focus on a compliant audience list.

  • Making sure that you are only importing permission-based contacts is the best thing you can do for your sender reputation. If audience contacts are aware of the sender, have a relationship with them, know they are on the sender's list, and expect to receive emails from them, most other compliance-related issues will take care of themselves.
  • Permission to send to a contact lasts for 12 months and applies to anyone who: purchased goods or services from you, provided permission to receive marketing communications through one of your forms, or one of the other ways mentioned here. Subscriber permission expires if the purchase was 12 months ago or more, if they did not open any mailings over the past 12 months, or if a contact has not been sent a mailing in the last 12 months.
  • Make sure your contacts are double opted-in through a Classic or Lightbox form. When requesting user data for email marketing, there are two signup methods available: single opt-in and confirmed opt-in (also known as double opt-in or verified opt-in). A double opt-in is kind of like 2-factor authentication security in that it involves two levels of confirmation.
  • Familiarize yourself with permissible vs not permissible lists.
  • Learn about spam trap email addresses and how to avoid them.

Always consider your email deliverability.