I saw somebody asking about CAN-SPAM on one of the email industry Slack groups recently and it reminds me that not everybody knows what it is. New people enter our industry every year, or work in locales outside the US. Thus, I think it might be a good time for a quick recap of the "Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing" Act of 2003.
CAN-SPAM was signed into law in 2003, becoming law on January 1, 2024. Meaning it's been twenty years since this thing came into existence. If you're not familiar on it, that's okay. Let's start with the basics.
What is it?
CAN-SPAM is the US Federal anti-spam law. The law provides a set of requirements that senders of commercial (marketing) email messages must adhere to, starting with requiring that senders include a postal address, honor unsubscribes, and prohibiting false or deceptive information in headers.
While it doesn't disallow unsolicited mail, it helps to reinforce permission-based marketing requirements by:
Defining an affirmative consent standard that provides a relatively simple way to answer the question of whether or not an email message is solicited,
The FTC has made it clear that CAN-SPAM does not apply to political senders. But those sending bulk email messaging of any type -- be it political campaign messages, advocacy or fundraising message for non profits, or something else -- should be aware that mailbox providers can and do set policies regarding spam filtering. Those policies universally disallow unsolicited messages.
Long story short, send unsolicited messaging in bulk, and you're likely to end up blocked. The fact that your messaging might not need to comply with CAN-SPAM will not help you in any way.
Permission ultimately rules when it comes to getting bulk email delivered to the inbox.
I saw somebody asking about CAN-SPAM on one of the email industry Slack groups recently and it reminds me that not everybody knows what it is. New people enter our industry every year, or work in locales outside the US. Thus, I think it might be a good time for a quick recap of the "Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing" Act of 2003.
CAN-SPAM was signed into law in 2003, becoming law on January 1, 2024. Meaning it's been twenty years since this thing came into existence. If you're not familiar on it, that's okay. Let's start with the basics.
What is it?
CAN-SPAM is the US Federal anti-spam law. The law provides a set of requirements that senders of commercial (marketing) email messages must adhere to, starting with requiring that senders include a postal address, honor unsubscribes, and prohibiting false or deceptive information in headers.
- Defining an affirmative consent standard that provides a relatively simple way to answer the question of whether or not an email message is solicited,
- Requiring that unsolicited marketing messages (spam) be labeled as such (with the side effect that they're ripe for blocking by mailbox providers),
- Making it clear that mailbox providers are allowed to set whatever standards they want when it comes to their best efforts to stop spam (meaning "you can't block my mail, I'm CAN-SPAM compliant!" means nothing),
- Requiring that email marketing messages have an easy unsubscribe mechanism (no, it is not okay to require that I login before you'll allow me to unsubscribe), and
- Providing a handy definition for determining whether or not your email message is transactional in nature.
Legal Action under CAN-SPAMWhile enforcement actions under CAN-SPAM have been few and far between, for those targeted, they've been expensive, unhappy experiences. The most recent one as of this writing seems to be the FTC levying a $2.9 million fine against a company called Verkada in 2024.
Applicability to Political and Non-Profit Senders
The FTC has made it clear that CAN-SPAM does not apply to political senders. But those sending bulk email messaging of any type -- be it political campaign messages, advocacy or fundraising message for non profits, or something else -- should be aware that mailbox providers can and do set policies regarding spam filtering. Those policies universally disallow unsolicited messages.
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