By Contributing Editor Janet Roberts
Anybody who relies on permission email campaigns had better put their coffee cups down and go tell the Federal government what they think about CAN-SPAM regulations that can hurt your business.
The Federal Trade Commission just issued a request for information in the rulemaking process for enforcing the new law. You can send paper comments, but the fastest way is to fill in the questionnaire the FTC provided.
You should fill it in, because the FTC will use your comments to shape regulations governing such areas as defining transactional or relationship emails, who an original sender is, etc.
Also, the questionnaire tells you what roads the FTC could go down. You'll really want to check this out if your email program relies on forward-to-a-friend campaigns, because the FTC is asking if the law should only affect you as the original advertiser or any individual who forwards your message to someone who previously asked to be off your list.
If you react today, you can go right to this URL and scroll down the alphabetical list of Federal agencies until you come to the FTC listing:
http://www.regulations.gov/pub_today.cfmThe other way is to go to the Regulations.gov Web site and search for the RFI:
http://www.regulations.govChoose Federal Trade Commission in the Agency list and put CAN-SPAM in the keyword blank. That will bring up the information request and link to the comment form.
You can also pull up an HTML or PDF version of the information request form to postal mail in. Here's the HTML version:
http://www.regulations.gov/freddocs/04-05500.htm
You can either just answer the questions or you can add comments, about 250 to 400 words' worth depending on how many big words you use. (The less lofty your vocabulary, the more you can say, because you're limited to 4,000 characters. Remember, "nuts" takes fewer characters than "ridiculous.")
Last but not least, here's our past article explaining why the new law is dangerous for the "good guys" and what you should be complaining about to the government:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/sample.cfm?contentID=257
