Are you spamming your customers legally?

Posted By: Richard Insley

Are you spamming your customers legally? - 10/15/04 01:19 AM

As the CAN-SPAM Act nears the end of its first year, most banks should have dealt with the basics by now.

How have BOLers designed their opt-out systems to allow customers to decline "commercial email messages": special email box? web page with an opt out form? Have many recipients opted out?
Posted By: Coming to Grips

Re: Are you spamming your customers legally? - 10/15/04 03:09 PM

We are in the midst of developing a "do not market" system for our entire enterprise. This will live at the customer database level and will eventually appear on our web pages, VRUs, etc. Right now, if someone doesn't want spam, they can email us or opt-out over the phone. Their account is then flagged. Most of our "spam" is sent via a 3P provider. We currently only spam our customers and include all the required information in our spam. The 3P provider tracks the opt-outs, of which we have had a few. We've also had a few customers report us to the spam cops where we've been blacklisted.

The problem we still have is policing the spam sent from desktops - the lenders and bankers who are letting customers and prospects know about our great rates. Those are the ones that will get us in trouble. I believe our email filters can identify some of these and kick them back to the sender. We've also talked about setting up our filters to place the required notices on every email that is sent to the Internet.

Information Security has taken a big interest in our still draft Email Marketing Policy. Info Security's requirements have caused the slow down in the approval process -- although I agree with their requirements.
Posted By: Pale Rider

Re: Are you spamming your customers legally? - 10/15/04 03:31 PM

We add any email opt-outs to our electronic file of privacy opt-outs. They are tracked on a systems known as relationship manager. Each email sent contains an electronic signature notice explaining the opt-out feature. I know of no requests for opting out since implementation of the notice. But it should be understood we do not have a program of marketing by email, so this is most likely the reason we don't have any requests for opting out.