Best practice guidelines for email marketing have just been published by the Direct Marketing Association after an elephantine pregnancy (marketinglaw’s editor Stephen Groom should know as he co-wrote them!).
Topic: Digital marketing
Who: Direct Marketing Association of the UK
Where: London
When: August 2004
What happened:
The E-mail Marketing Council of the Direct Marketing Association launched its Best Practice Guidelines for e-mail marketing.
Co-authored by EMMC members, including marketinglaw.co.uk editor and Osborne Clarke partner Stephen Groom, the Guidelines have been 18 months in the making.
Packed with practical tips on effective e-mail marketing as well as assistance with achieving compliance, the guidelines eschew the "opt out" approach allowed by the law in the context of most B2B e-mail marketing. Instead they recommend opt-in across the board, although they shrink from a "double opt in" regime of the kind advocated by some.
In an appendix the Guidelines contain a useful summary of applicable laws to date as well as a glossary of terms.
Why this matters:
For most of us, the image we have of e-mail marketing is dominated by the hundreds of spam messages we return to after the summer holidays. There are, however, many UK marketers who do want to market compliantly and responsibly using this medium, and as the first of its kind in the UK this aide to best practice aims to boost the campaign to persuade digital marketing recipients that there is a world out there beyond spam.
