In order to deliver beyond the requirements of the Act, you need to practice permission. Overdeliver on the expectations you set and strive to enhance your relationship with each communication you send.

The following sections explain the four types of permission and give you some rules to follow so you can impress your customers and build trust.

Spam complaints are your recipients’ way of telling you that, for one reason or another, they no longer want to hear from you. In the case of some email programs (AOL, for example), they actively tell their customers to use the “This is spam” button rather than unsubscribe. When people receive an email they didn’t ask for, they are much more likely to report it as spam. A spam complaint is your recipient’s way of telling you that he has lost trust in you.

It’s also important for you to keep in mind that permission has to be renewed by your recipient in some cases. Sometimes consumers react negatively to email after a certain event has occurred. For example, the bridal industry is notorious for this. While a bride-to-be is willing to hear from one and all about weddings and bride-related topics leading up to her wedding, the day after the wedding she seems to have an adverse reaction to receiving those communications. Accordingly, wedding caterers, photographers, bands, and the like are subject to having a time-sensitive audience.

I suggest that industries with time sensitivity put their recipients into list groupings by the month of the event and then delete the lists or ask for permission again as each month passes.

I could just say that if your recipient doesn’t know who you are, then you don’t have permission. However, this is an area of confusion to some people, so let’s look at it a little deeper.

There are instances where it is crystal clear that you don’t have permission. For example, if someone were to offer you an opportunity to buy an email list, this is clearly a situation where you do not have permission. The recipients on a purchased list have no clue who you are, and if you send to this list, you and your business will be labeled as spammers.

Other areas of permission are a little less clear. Let’s say you join a local Chamber of Commerce and notice that as a member you have access to the membership directory that includes email addresses for all the members. You crawl the directory and create a list of the members to send an email marketing campaign to since you, too, are now a member. Ask yourself, do these people know you? No. In fact, you may have violated one of the provisions under the CAN-SPAM Act, which prohibits crawling web pages for email addresses. No matter how you slice it, do NOT send an email campaign to people who don’t know you.

That does not mean you can’t engage them in a one-to-one email dialogue by going through the list and sending an introduction to each member letting him or her know that you just joined the Chamber. In fact, you could use this introductory email to tell them about your monthly newsletter and even include a link in your email that points them to where they can sign up for your list. However, you cannot send a bulk email campaign to the group. That is spam.

Email appending is another gray area. We at Constant Contact do not believe this is a legitimate way to build a list. Others have differing opinions, but we believe if the recipient has not provided you with his or her email address, then you don’t have permission and you should not send. Email appending uses known email formats to come up with potential email addresses for individuals on a list. For example, you know my name is Eric Groves and you know I work at Constant Contact. The companies that provide email-appending services will provide you with a list of potential email addresses when you provide this basic information. In my case, they would provide you with [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] and so on. At the end of the day, if you are sending me a message and I don’t know who you are or how I ended up on your list, there is no trust or relationship. I am just going to delete it and worse, if you call, your reputation with me is below where it would be if you just called.

As you can tell, the potential for the recipient to react favorably or not to your communication depends greatly on the relationship and the level of trust in that relationship.

If you aren’t sure if you have the right kind of permission, I recommend that you use a permission reminder at the top of your emails when sending to a list that includes greater than 30 percent implicit permission email addresses. A permission reminder is simply a text message at the top of your communication that informs recipients why they are receiving your message and includes an unsubscribe link to make it easy for your recipient to remove themselves from your list if they do not want to continue receiving it. Constant Contact allows you to turn this on or off in every email with a toggle button in the product.

It is perfectly fine to include email subscribers with implied permission on your email list. However, it is important to recognize that you need to take the aforementioned additional steps to ensure your communications continue the process of building trust.

The key element in both of these situations is that the recipient is actually signing up directly for your email communications and is looking forward to receiving them from you.

It is important to remind your new recipient that she has been added to your list. For example, Constant Contact provides an automated welcome email that is sent automatically after someone signs up. If you are collecting the addresses either at point-of-sale or via an online form, it’s a good idea to set up an initial email that confirms that people have been added to your list.

This process is recommended for businesses that are either dealing with government agencies, security professionals, or have an audience that has a high concentration of technology professionals. These groups tend to require a double-opt-in process and are therefore used to the added step required.

This added step in obtaining Explicit Permission is not required for most businesses and organizations. In fact, in most cases where it is used with an audience that is not used to the process, the added step causes a loss of more than 60 percent of the individuals that sign up for your list due to the confusion caused by the added step in the process.

If you decide to go with confirmed permission, you’ll gain higher loyalty and probably better delivery, but you’ll lose some subscribers who either don’t understand the process or aren’t willing to click the link.

For more information and the latest trends in permission-based email marketing, check out Constant Contact’s Learning Center and our Hints & Tips email newsletter. Permission is a hot topic, and we’re always writing about how you can take advantage of the best practices in permission.