From time to time we get questions from our members and we will try to answer many of them here.

I work for an organization that has a "community" portion of its site. People sign up and among the "benefits" they get is a newsletter. There is no way to opt out of this newsletter and we get a lot of complaints about it. This organization is run by an individual who would not be likely to listen to any employee who pointed out that an opt out or unsubscribe option would not only be courteous but also probably less illegal than what we're doing now.

Q: How can we shake the boss up to alert her to the fact that people should be able to unsubscribe?

A: The practise of sending email newsletters without and unsubscribe is Illegal under the CAN SPAM act. This can result in mailings to members that actually want to receive these communications to go missing. Worse yet it may result in heavy fines and other possible legal actions if this is intentionally ignored or omitted.

Here is a summery article that talks about the CAN spam law and the requirements of a mailer: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/canspam.shtm

Here's a rundown of the law's main provisions:

• It bans false or misleading header information.
• It prohibits deceptive subject lines.
• It requires that your email give recipients an opt-out method.
• It requires that commercial email be identified as an advertisement and include the sender's valid physical postal address.

Penalties

* Each violation of the above provisions is subject to fines of up to $11,000.

Q: If I give you the company information, can you get in touch with her?

A: We know several great consultants that work in the field of email marketing we can point you in the right direction for that. However, if your worried about telling this to your employeer yourself... Will they listen to anyone else?

Q1 - I would like to know if inviting viewers of my email to subscribe to my
newsletters that I send out from MyNewSite.com seen as spam?

Q2 - As I surf on the internet and come across a group or individual I would like to invite to subscribe to my group on Mysite.com and the
newsletter?

This is sort of how the invitation would look like, it may also have some graphics with it.

Subject: {Your Friend} is Inviting to join MyNewSite.com
From: Invite at MyNewSite.com
To: Invited User Email
Data: Today

{Your Friend} has invited you to join MyNewSite.com

To Accept this invitation click this link: http://www.MyNewSite.com/join/invite=12354

To Decline this invitation do Nothing, You have not been subscribed to receive any emails

{Your Friend's Message goes here}

you should join this!

Thanks,

{Your Friend} and MyNewSite.com

A1 - To answer the first art of your question, Invitations that are sent by a individual to a friend or aquantence are generally not considered to be spam. Current subscribers of your list should be ok with this, that is if you have already obtained their permission to communicate with them via email. Sending an announcement in your current email program that invites them to your new one would be the best way to do this.

A2 - As for invitations there are several ways for list managers and users to utilize these types of invitation tools correctly:

DO:

• Users: Know the individual your inviting
• Users: Know that they have some interest in the topic that they are being invited to
  
  
• List Managers: Invitations are one time triggered mailings to a individual or group of individuals that are entered by the initiator {Your Friend}
• List Managers: Include an opt-out of all future invites, regardless of who sends it for recipients

DO NOT:

• Users: Send to everyone in your address book
• List Managers/Users: Send invitations to addresses that are harvested from newsgroups, web pages or other by other means.
• List Managers: Send multiple invitations to users that do not click the "Accept this invitation" link or have previously asked not to be communicated with.