I've noticed a bit of confusion about the CAN-SPAM law after my Marketing Mess: 16 out of 21 business owners are guilty post from yesterday.
This post should serve to clarify at least some of the confusion as the "CAN-SPAM" (you would have thought they could have come up with a better acronym for a NON-spamming law) law was updated last year so that:
1. The "physical mailing address" which must be present on your email communications and website CAN be a post office or private mailing box.
2. The time period between which you must remove people who opt out (or unsubscribe) from your list is 10 days.
3. You must make it as easy as possible for people to unsubscribe from your communications – meaning the only information they need to provide is their email address and opt-out preferences (if you have many types of communications) AND they should not have to perform multiple clicks, login or give a password in order to unsubscribe.
Want to read all the changes for yourself?
Visit the FTC Updated CAN-SPAM Law to read the 109 pages of Final Rule Definitions and Implementation Guidance.
Want a quicker read? Check out the FTC's May 12, 2008 CAN-SPAM Law update press release on the same topic.
As an aside, as a matter of privacy protection, I would never recommend that you put your home address *out there* in InternetLand for all the world to see.
If you don't yet subscribe to my ezine, you'll want to start getting it as I frequently mention things like this and, actually, this was included in last year's July 1st issue. You can sign up to the upper left of this post. 🙂