I almost fell off my chair with laughter after reading this press release on scoop today. Below is an extract of the press release.

“New Zealand’s largest printing services company, PMP NZ Limited, predicts the introduction of the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act will boost an already buoyant unaddressed media market, and provide great opportunities for the company’s newly launched division, PMP Direct.”

Source

We so far have two clients who stopped their printed media services because of two main reasons:

1. Its expensive – VERY expensive compared to email. Their entire email marketing budget for the year costs the same for 1 month of printed media including the postage costs!
2. Its not measureable – our clients can see in real time who opened their email, who clicked on what link.

I for one always grab any kind of unaddressed printed media that pollutes my personal mail box and companies mail box and dump it straight in the trash. It is astounding the waste of natural materials that goes into producing mountains of glossy printed material. There should be a law that controls the amount of unaddressed printed material companies are allowed to produce - just imagine how many resources are used to produce this stuff when most of it ends up in my trash.

Personally I do not read any unaddressed media as a protest for the excessive waste and damage printed media causes the environment. Now I may be wrong but that’s how I see it.

“The Government’s anti-spam team received 155 complaints from the public about spam e-mails during the first week that the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act was in force.”

That’s quite a good effort when you think that most consumers would not even be aware of the NZ Anti-SPAM Act.

The real effort for the DIA is determining if the spammer is in fact based in NZ – if not then I would think there would be no reason to pursue the spammer. Most people don’t realize that 80% of the SPAM sent is generated by 200 core spammers who are mostly based in the US, China and Russia. Some of the spammers based in the US are in fact sending SPAM which is compliant with the CAN-SPAM Act!

“What information should I keep about consent and for how long? ”

Below is the data our Mobilize Mail system captures for each subscriber. The subscriber data is kept in our system for as long as the client is with us. I recommend you keep the same amount of information as well - it might be overkill but its a safe option

Details that should be kept include evidence of:

(a) consents to the receiving of commercial electronic messages;

(b) time of sending, and content, of all commercial electronic messages sent to recipients;

(c) unsubscribe facilities included in the commercial electronic messages; and

(d) removal of the recipient from a mailing list, including any messages confirming removal.

Sending Opt-out Reconfirmation Emails

No… No… No…!!

You cannot send an email to your subscribers saying:

If you do not wish to receive emails from “AMCE”, please reply and type UNSUBSCRIBE in the Subject Line.

That is not getting consent!! That is called Opt-out and it is not permitted as stated in the Unsolicited Electronic Message Act 2007. If you don’t believe me then here is the DIA response to an email I sent them which contained this approach.

Essentially having looked at the content of the e mail message to your client from <company name removed> they are wrong if they are making an assumption that no response should be treated and taken as consent from a recipient to continue with the relationship and to continue to send commercial electronic messages.

A large number of companies are currently sanitizing their address lists to ensure that they have the recipient’s consent to send commercial electronic messages. This would need to be completed by 5 September 2005, which is the date when the new Act comes into force.

In relation to your question, to ensure that the consent you receive complies with the new Act, it is better to ask the question in the positive form, getting them to “opt in” rather than “opt out”. (e.g. If you wish to receive promotional emails please click here etc).

Correspondence cannot establish consent for future purposes. Many recipients may have treated emails to unsubscribe, or to “opt out” if they do not wish to receive promotional information as Spam, and not open or responded to it.

There is no real relationship when the communication is one sided, and the recipient’s silence should not be taken as acquiescence.

It is up to the sender to prove such consent existed. If a complaint is made, the Anti Spam Compliance Unit would ask why the sender believed such consent existed. Whatever method is used to collect evidence of consent (ie written form, “tick boxes”, records of phone conversations etc) should be sufficient to satisfy any investigation should a complaint be made. This applies to old email contacts, as well as any future contacts.

If in doubt, you should obtain consent before commercial electronic messages are sent.

I am sure you have already familiarised yourself with the DIA complaints page, I have copied the link for your information.

http://complaints.antispam.govt.nz/EmailComplaint.aspx

Hope this helps.

On Friday we attended the Department of Internal Affair’s (DIA) workshop on the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007(Act). Running for a little over an hour the workshop covered the basics of what Spam is and how you may know you have come into contact with it (emails like: Nigerian Scams, Russian Brides, Degrees etc).

The grounds for bringing in the legislation were provided and some of the reasons mentioned were: preventing a lack in user confidence in electronic communication and in particular electronic commerce; Spam clogs networks and is a threat to network integrity and security. Spam reduces productivity and can result in identity theft.

For those of you that didn’t know the Act and it’s regulations were drafted by the Ministry of Economic Development, however the enforcement of the Act is in the hands of the DIA. A simple explanation of how to know if a message is Spam was offered by the DIA: If the message is electronic; commercial and unsolicited it is Spam. The message is not Spam unless it meets all three requirements (unsolicited, electronic and commercial). So before you send a message – assess it and contact the recipient by telephone, fax or snail mail to get approval before sending your message.

If your message is ‘commercial’ – contains information about your goods & services (definition supplied in the Good & Services Guarantees Act) then you will also need to provide an ‘unsubscribe’ facility and process the unsubscribe within five days.

It is easy to report Spam – go to www.antispam.govt.nz (live from Wednesday 5th Sept 07) and the disciplinary process can be as many as four steps or if the spam is severe enough only one step – straight to court!