4 minute read
Email marketing and the Spam Act: the three rules
Consent, identify, unsubscribe: what Australian businesses need for marketing emails to stay on the right side of the law.
Email newsletters and offers are one of the best ways to keep clients coming back. In Australia, commercial emails are covered by the Spam Act, which comes down to three simple rules.
1. Consent
Only send marketing emails to people who have agreed to receive them. Express consent, such as ticking a box to join your newsletter, is the clearest. Keep a record of how and when someone agreed.
2. Identify yourself
Every email must clearly show who sent it and how to contact you.
3. Make it easy to unsubscribe
Every marketing email needs a simple way to unsubscribe, and you must honour the request within 5 working days. Once someone unsubscribes, do not email them marketing again.
Good habits beyond the rules
- Send something useful: news, tips or a genuine offer.
- Keep it short, with one clear action.
- Send yourself a test before it goes out.
- Write subject lines that say what is inside.
How CAQA Ops helps
CAQA Ops only sends campaigns to contacts marked as agreeing to marketing emails, adds your company details and an unsubscribe link to every email, and marks people unsubscribed the moment they click it so they are never emailed again. The assistant can draft the email from a sentence, and you can send yourself a test first.
See the Australian Communications and Media Authority for the full rules. This guide is general information, not legal advice.