Email marketing is a proven and effective way to leverage your contact list to increase revenue. This guide will go over how to make the most of this feature in Thryv Business Center while maintaining compliance with federal law, and avoiding the dreaded spam filter.

Compliance with CAN-SPAM

A federal law known as the “CAN-SPAM Act” applies to all commercial email messages, meaning those that promote your business or its services or products.  Basically, the law permits businesses to market to a prospect or lead, via a validly-obtained email address, until that recipient asks you to stop, in which case you must do so right away.  All commercial email must comply with the law, whether your prospects or customers are individual consumers or other companies - there are no exceptions for business-to-business email.  Some of the main requirements to follow in email marketing campaigns include:

• Use accurate sender information – “From,” “To,” “Reply-To,” and routing details must correctly identify you or your company.
• No misleading subject lines – The subject must accurately reflect the email’s content. For example, a subject line of “An important email about your life insurance policy” should not have content that says “…because you will “die” once you find out about these deals on bespoke suits.”
• Identify ads clearly – You must disclose that the message is an advertisement or commercial email. There isn't set verbiage required on this, so there is leeway allowed.
• Include your location – Provide a valid physical postal address, which can be a street address, P.O. box, or private mailbox registered under Postal Service regulations.
• Make unsubscribing easy – Your email must include a clear, simple way for recipients to opt out, such as a return email or a single-click process. You cannot block opt-out requests with spam filters. In addition, these opt-out requests must be processed within 10 business days and remain valid for at least 30 days. There can not be conditions required to opt-out.
• Monitor third-party email marketing – If you hire another person or company to send emails, you are still legally responsible for compliance.

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Best Practices for Email Deliverability

While complying with CAN-SPAM is an essential foundation, it isn't enough to ensure your email reaches your client's inbox. Here are some useful tips to ensure your message reaches your clients.

• Scrub your email list - Regularly keep your contact list up to date and remove or correct incorrect emails. The more of your emails that are considered undeliverable, the more likely email servers are to recognize your emails as spam. For our full guide to scrubbing your email list, Click Here.
• Mismatched links - When the visible link text doesn't match the actual URL it goes to. 
• Spoofed sender address - Using an email address that appears to be from a legitimate company but is not. 
• Avoid Spam Triggers - Certain words are flagged by many email servers that might cause them to consider an email as spam. These are words often associated with promotional emails including but not limited to “free,” “guarantee,” “urgent,” or "act now." Excessive punctuation (Click Here!!!!!!) could also trigger this. In addition, excessive urgency (act now!) is a major indicator to email servers that an email might be spam. There is no one exhaustive list and each individual email server may behave differently. In addition, the use of these words doesn't necessarily guarantee the email will be sent to spam.
• Generic greetings - Starting emails with "Dear Sir/Madam" instead of using a recipient's name.
• Poor grammar and spelling mistakes - Obvious errors in the email content. 
• Write engaging copy - Keep a balanced text-to-image ratio (spam filters flag image-heavy emails).
• Send emails at the right frequency - Avoid overwhelming subscribers with too many emails, and ensure your emails are expected and relevant to your audience.
• If a customer is having your emails go to Spam, have them whitelist our emails - an unfamiliar sender is also used as an indicator of spam. To prevent emails from going to spam, your customer can add reply@thryv.com and no-reply@thryv.com to their safe sender list. Here is a guide for them to do so. 

This “Best Practices” content is provided for convenience and information only and is not intended as legal advice.  We do not claim that this information represents an accurate summary of the laws in this area or that it will be updated for any changes.  Please consult an attorney for questions about your compliance with applicable laws.