Here's why you should never send email "from" an email address that doesn't exist, and why an email address from which you send email needs to be real. Once upon a time somebody - somewhere - somehow decided that it would be good idea to send email to their mailing lists using an email address in their "From:" field that didn't really exist. But sending email "from" an email address that doesn't really exist is a spectacularly bad idea. In fact, it may even qualify as the Epic Fail of "from" email address ideas.
Why would people who request your email, maybe even pay to receive your email, still report it as spam? Here's why. By way of example, we have a customer who sends email out on behalf of a very large, very well-known institution in the financial investment world. Some of these mailings lists are paid mailing lists. By which we mean that the users paid to receive these emails. And yet, they still report it as spam. Why would they do this? Here's why.
Did you know that certain popular buzzwords can actually hurt your deliverability when used in your email subject line? No, we're not talking about so-called 'spam trigger words', although those are still a thing despite what some may say. And did you know that personalization in your email subject line (and even in your opening salutation) can also hurt your deliverability?
Email address confirmation messages are those messages that email senders who use best practices send to people who sign up for their mailing lists. The purpose of the email confirmation message is to confirm that the person actually wants to be on, and consents to being put on, your mailing list before they get added to the mailing list. The problem is, some email senders see confirmation messages as a place to slip in a little advertising.
Here's a fun "what if" game, play along with us: What if the boss gave you $10,000 to improve your brand's email marketing ROI? How would you spend it? What would you do? Well, for us that was a no-brainer. But before we tell you how we would spend that $10k, and why, let's cover some basics.
If you send email, especially email marketing or other bulk email, then there are the two things that your business contracts must contain, even in the U.S., to be not just GDPR compliant, but GDPR-proofed.
It's hard to believe as we are closing in on 2023 that there are still email marketers and other bulk email senders who don't immediately remove people who unsubscribe from their list, but it's true. So this article is for those people who need to understand that you really really need to remove the email addresses of people who want to opt-out from your mailing lists as soon as humanly possible. Yes, even though CAN-SPAM gives you 10 days to do it!
With the UK adopting their own UK GDPR following Brexit, it's important to understand that you can't just block from your website people coming in from the EU or the UK. As we have mentioned in other articles on GDPR compliance, GDPR specifically prohibits the automated profiling of individuals, including of their online identifiers or locations, which means that it is a violation of GDPR to note, in an automated fashion, from what region in the world they are surfing over to your website.
Despite that GDPR is coming up on its fifth anniversary, people are still asking questions like "What is a 'data controller' or a 'data processor' under GDPR?" And "How is a GDPR data processor different from a GDPR data controller?" And even "Can a company be both a data processor and a data controller at the same time under the EU General Data Protection Regulation?" And the ever important question: "Do we have to comply with GDPR if we are in the U.S.?" Here are the answers.
By now everybody knows that business email addresses that go directly to one individual, such as jo********@ex*****.com, are considered personal data (personally identifiable information, or PII) for the purposes of GDPR and, increasingly, email privacy laws in other countries. But what about generic business email addresses, such as in**@ex*****.com, sa***@ex*****.com, or co*****@ex*****.com (also known as 'role account' email addresses)? The conventional wisdom is that those are not considered personal data, and so are fair game to add to your mailing list without prior consent. But not always, there's a catch!
