Acceptable use policy
An email sender’s reputation is the most important factor that determines if your message will reach your subscriber’s inbox. To assist our clients improve recipient engagement and their reputation as a sender with not only recipients but ISP’s and related parties that assist with delivery – the following 11 Best Practise Guidelines form the Acceptable Use Policy for your use of our SmartMail email marketing application.
1. You must obtain informed affirmative consent by providing a clear choice for the subscriber to sign up to your email list. This should be through an unchecked box on a web form that includes a conspicuous link to a Privacy Policy as well as details about:
a. The nature of the messages.
b. The frequency of the messages.
2. Record and maintain records of subscriptions to your lists. If the subscription is online, at A minimum, you should record the IP address, Date / Time, Email address and First and Last names. If the subscription is off-line you should keep the paper forms that were used for subscription or the script used.
3. Honour unsubscribes. Always offer more than one method to unsubscribe and ensure that unsubscribes are honoured immediately. Although the law allows you up to 5 days to do this you should never send an email to an unsubscribed email address. SmartMail’s unsubscribe tool ensures that unsubscribes are processed immediately.
4. Make it easy for people to unsubscribe from your list. In an effort to help our clients reduce their complaints, SmartMail has the unsubscribe link to the top of each email, and has a one-click unsubscribe function across the board.
5. Option to opt-out of all communications - if you have more than one newsletter, ensure you provide an option to opt-out of all communications, as well as individual news groups.
6. Never make it a requirement for a subscriber to log in or provide any other information other than their email address to opt-out. SmartMail does not require any information to opt-out or unsubscribe. Each unsubscribe link has a token that identifies the list and the subscriber.
7. Adopt “One Subscription, One List" as a policy. Addresses should never be added to other lists without fully verified consent of the address owner. Lack of relevance is a leading cause of complaints. A notification about the new mailing list may be appropriate on the existing mailing list, but existing subscribers should never be subscribed automatically to the new list.
8. Maintain consistent From Names, From Addresses and Subject lines. Make it easy for your subscribers to identify your messages through consistent subject line content as well as From Names and addresses.
9. Encourage your subscribers to add your From address to their address book or personal whitelist. This will not only ensure that they receive your email but it will also help ISPs to identify that your subscribers are more engaged with you as a sender.
10. Always send them what they expect and want to receive. Preference centres are recommended to encourage choices about content, frequency and keep your subscribers engaged. Engaged subscribers are less likely to complain.
11. Maintain your lists. Hard bounces should be removed after 1-3 consecutive hard bounces. Review your opens and click throughs to find addresses that have consistently showed no open or click through activity, and try to re-engage or remove these addresses carefully.