CAN SPAM Act

CAN-SPAM

A federal law that regulates commercial email. It bans false/misleading header information; prohibits deceptive subject lines; requires your email give recipients a way to opt out of receiving emails; requires commercial email be identified as an ad & include the sender's valid physical address.

Web Form

A form located on a web page making it possible for someone to join an email list by submitting his/her email address and possibly other information such as a name.

Email Marketing

A form of marketing that uses email to communicate commercial messages to an audience.

Confirmed Opt-in

A process by which a subscriber gives a company permission to email him/her at the email address used to join that company's email list, by responding to a confirmation email asking the subscriber to click a link. This ensures that only the owner of the email address is signing that address up to an email list.

Segmentation

A process of grouping your list into smaller subgroups based on certain criteria. An example of this would be email subscribers on your list who purchased a given product, but not those subscribers who have not yet purchased that product

Welcome Email

An initial email sent to new subscribers. It commonly thanks them for signing up and sets expectations about what sort of emails to expect.

Personalization

Sending an email that contains the recipient's personal information, making it look as though the email was sent to only that recipient.

Deliverability

The ability of an email to be delivered to subscribers' inboxes as intended.

Return on Investment (ROI)

The ratio of gain or loss on a particular investment.

Spam

Unsolicited bulk email. Email experts occasionally disagree about the precise definition, but in general they agree that it means any email sent in bulk to people who did not request that email and/or do not want to receive it.