So as you may know, after years in the waiting, the FTC has finally released updated regulations to CAN-SPAM in response to the many questions raised throughout the years.
As I am completing a thorough review of the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) final ruling on CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act), I wondered just how reputation would play in some of this.
In one of the rulings, the FTC has clarified the definition of “sender” and it provides that multiple parties advertising in a single commercial message, under certain conditions, may identify ONE among them as the sole “sender” of the message or the responsible party for making sure the message is compliant with CAN-SPAM. This also means that if that “sender” is not compliant in that email, then all parties advertising could be held accountable for the message and noncompliance.
How does the reputation of the SOLE sender affect the delivery of the email when multiple advertisers are in it? This mean that ontop of deciding who wants the legal liability (who does) to be the representative for others products/services within that email, you should also be looking at just how reputable that SOLE sender is in today’s reputation based driven email market.
Example: For us fogies who have been around long enough in the anti-spam market, we all know of a certain coffee maker who in the past and still today’s has some "bad" emailing practices (they spam).
Questions are:
- When said coffee maker is one of many advertisers in a single email and also the designated sender, how does their reputation hurt the others? Will it? when it comes to complaints driven to a point that the receiver blocks by content will that coffee makers content hurt others?
- When multiply advertisers are deciding who the sole sender will be, will that sole sender ensure that email comes from a clean IP/domain? associated with the sender brand? one they control (especially when it comes to authentication)?
- How will reputation be monitored or calculated on multi advertisers?
I have my own thoughts, but wanted to hear yours.
-Dennis
Eloqua
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The FTC is looking for legally responsbile entities, while reputation systems use identifiers such as the source IP address or authenticated domain. It's pretty much impossible to directly tie that IP or domain with a legal entity during an SMTP conversation; it has to be done out-of-band, if at all.
So, just as today, the "real world" reputation of the legal entity responsible for a message will have little if any bearing on the email reputation used in delivery decisions.
(The only exception is when an out-of-band investigation certifies a particular identifier as being good, as with Sender Score Certified, or bad, as with Spamhaus. Those investigations — like FTC actions — almost always involve the real-world, legally repsonsible entity.)
Coffee makers, Diploma mills (three of them that I can think of), the various gift card vendors etc that use spam from coreg leads and affiliate programs to drive leads, arent going to be immunized from liability under can-spam even with these revised rules.
And as JD says they wont have any difference at all on the email deliverability of their affiliate spam (or sometimes, of their regular mailouts, where their affiliates slip up and dont clean as well as they should).