Thinking of sending newsletters or other direct email to your contacts? Check the law before you click “send”. If your email turns out to be spam, you can face significant risks and penalties.
By sending unwanted commercial email, you may annoy potential customers, losing sales and relationship opportunities. Email providers, such as AOL, Gmail or Yahoo may add you to their junk mail filters, preventing even your legitimate emails from reaching their destinations. Your ISP and web host may shut down your email and web hosting, causing you embarassment, lost responses from interested customers, and an administrative headache. Under US CAN-SPAM regulations, you could be fined or jailed. And, if you send deceptive email, you could be charged under laws that ban false and misleading advertising.
Don’t assume that your email recipients are just individuals. If a lawyer puts together a class action suit, your individual email recipients may represent a major court challenge.
Tomorrow, I’ll cover tips for sending email without violating CAN-SPAM rules.