Email & Mobile Message Marketing- Navigating Through A Maze of New and Existing Laws
Submitted by Whyte Hirschboeck Dudek
Does your company send e-mail to its customers or potential custmers regarding your company’s products or services? Or is your company one of the cutting edge companies sending mobile commercial messages to customers using cell phones or pagers? If so, your company is likely covered by a maze of new and existing laws affecting e-mail and mobile message marketing.
The most notable of these laws is the new federal CAN SPAM Act (the “SPAM Act”). Although you may have heard
a lot about the SPAM Act, we’ve discovered that many companies are not yet complying with the SPAM Act, which went into effect on January 1, 2004. If your company hasn’t recently addressed compliance with the new and existing laws affecting e-mail and mobile messaging marketing, now is a good time to do so.
On December 16, 2004, the Federal Trade Commission issued new regulations governing e-mail marketing activities under the SPAM Act. Similarly, on October 16, 2004, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued new regulations governing mobile message marketing activities. Although the SPAM Act is not difficult to comply with and not very burdensome for most companies (at least as relates to e-mail marketing activities), if your company does not comply with the SPAM Act, the penalties and consequences can be significant.
Unfortunately for companies, the SPAM Act is only one of a number of laws that will potentially affect your company’s e-mail and mobile message marketing efforts. Although the federal SPAM Act was intended to create a uniform law affecting e-mail and mobile message marketing, it left a loophole for states to create their own state-specific laws to address misleading and deceptive e-mails and mobile messages. The SPAM Act also left in tack existing consumer protection laws dealing with misleading and deceptive advertising practices that generally apply to all company marketing materials and a host of common law causes of action related to sending unsolicited e-mail. This article will provide an overview of the SPAM Act’s requirements and related legal issues that your company should consider in its e-mail and mobile message marketing efforts.
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