Email Flow email broadcasting compliance

Email broadcasting for professionals

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Compliance & Law

Email Flow complies with all the relevant email legislation, good practices and has its own acceptable use policy.

Accreditation & good practices:

Before undertaking any direct marketing campaign you need to be aware of the following key pieces of legislation:

Data Protection Act (DPA)

Most companies are obliged to register with the Office Of Information Commissioner. You can find more information at www.dataprotection.gov.uk including details of whether you need to register, how to go about doing so and the fees involved.

The Data Protection Act covers all forms of data including all paper records, computerised records, audio and video data and email addresses - when you collect any data from a customer you must tell them what the information is required for. This data must be securely stored and anyone can then ask you for a copy of the information you hold on them. Some companies make a small charge to provide a copy of this information.

With particular reference to direct marketing, the DPA requires that the level of data you hold on someone should not be too excessive and that everyone has a right to opt out of direct marketing. In fact all your marketing information should have an opt-out clause.

The Directive On Privacy And Electronic Communications (DPEC)

Formally known as the Communications Data Protection Directive, the DPEC came into effect on October 31st 2003, and states that unless you have an existing customer/business relationship, you must take an opt-in approach when conducting email marketing to "natural persons" (private individuals and sole traders) in the UK and partnerships in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The means it is no longer enough to provide an opt-out option - individuals need to explicitly give their permission for you (or a third party in partnership with you) to send them marketing information by email. The email sender is responsible for complying with this legislation.

E-Commerce Directive:

This requires that all unsolicited commercial email (UCE) should be immediately identifiable as soon as it is received (thereby enabling automatic deletion/filtering). It also requires that all websites should have full postal and telephone contact details.

The Telecommunications (Data Protection and Privacy) (Direct Marketing) Regulations 1998

This act relates to telephone and fax marketing and requires that companies using those media for their marketing must comply with strict regulations:

"Proper persons" (ie sole traders and partners) must not be faxed without getting their permission first.
Anyone planning a fax campaign must first check their list of fax numbers against the Fax Preference Service - a database of companies who have registered their wish not to receive any fax marketing.
All fax broadcasters must have their own suppression database - a list of companies who have asked to be excluded from their marketing database.

In order to prevent abuse of pay-per-minute unsubscribe numbers, all fax documents must contain either a company address or a free form of response

Acceptable use policy

Marketing Source Ltd does not provide consulting services or sell Email Flow in support of: unsolicited bulk e-mail, or sexually explicit content.
Unsolicited means that the Recipient has not granted permission for the message to be sent. Bulk means that the message is sent as part of a larger collection of messages, all having substantively identical content.
Exception: Updates with relevant information to customers with an established business relationship to the sender (who may not have actually given specific permission to receive updates) is okay as long as the customer can easily opt-out of the updates.
If the application of this policy to your sending is not clear, please ask.

If Marketing Source Ltd, at its sole discretion, determines that Licensee is using Email Flow in violation of the above Acceptable Use Policy, then Marketing Source Ltd may stop providing support for Email Flow to Licensee.