Like any email marketing software, it's important that you use Instant in a way that protects your brand reputation and is compliant with United States spam regulations.
1. Only send compliant emails
The CAN-SPAM Act 2003 and the accompanying CAN-SPAM Rule outline your responsibilities as an email sender in the United States. The Federal Trade Commission has published a useful guide to assist businesses with their compliance.
When sending an email, ensure that you:
- Don’t use false or misleading header information. your “From,” “To,” “Reply-To,” and routing information – including the originating domain name and email address – must be accurate and identify the person or business who initiated the message.
- Don’t use deceptive subject lines. The subject line must accurately reflect the content of the message.
- Identify the message as an ad. The law gives you a lot of leeway in how to do this, but you must disclose clearly and conspicuously that your message is an advertisement.
- Tell recipients where you’re located. Your message must include your valid physical postal address. This can be your current street address, a post office box you’ve registered with the U.S. Postal Service, or a private mailbox you’ve registered with a commercial mail receiving agency established under Postal Service regulations.
- Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future marketing email from you. Your message must include a clear and conspicuous explanation of how the recipient can opt out of getting marketing email from you in the future. Craft the notice in a way that’s easy for an ordinary person to recognize, read, and understand. Creative use of type size, color, and location can improve clarity. Give a return email address or another easy Internet-based way to allow people to communicate their choice to you. You may create a menu to allow a recipient to opt out of certain types of messages, but you must include the option to stop all marketing messages from you. Make sure your spam filter doesn’t block these opt-out requests.
- Remember that subscribers and members can opt out of marketing emails, too. Recipients of emails from a sender that runs a subscription service or membership program still have the right to opt out of marketing messages from you. While you don’t need to get members’ consent to send them marketing emails, subscribers and members don’t lose their ability to opt out of marketing emails from you simply because they have a subscription or membership. Before sending a message without an unsubscribe link to subscribers or members, be sure that the primary purpose of the message fits within one of the five categories of “transactional or relationship” message set out in the Act. If it doesn’t, you need to include a way for recipients to opt out of further marketing messages from you.
- Honor opt-out requests promptly. Any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send your message. You must honor a recipient’s opt-out request within 10 business days. You can’t charge a fee, require the recipient to give you any personally identifying information beyond an email address, or make the recipient take any step other than sending a reply email or visiting a single page on an Internet website as a condition for honoring an opt-out request. Once people have told you they don’t want to receive more messages from you, you can’t sell or transfer their email addresses, even in the form of a mailing list. The only exception is that you may transfer the addresses to a company you’ve hired to help you comply with the CAN-SPAM Act.
- Monitor what others are doing on your behalf. The law makes clear that even if you hire another company to handle your email marketing, you can’t contract away your legal responsibility to comply with the law. Both the company whose product is promoted in the message and the company that actually sends the message may be held legally responsible.
2. Keep your privacy policy and terms up to date
When implementing any new website analytics product, businesses should update their privacy policies to keep their customers informed.
When implementing Instant in the United States, merchants must update their privacy policies.
The following clause is our standard recommendation:
We use Instant to help us understand how our customers use our site, and use this information to retarget for marketing purposes. You can read more about how Instant uses your Personal Information here: https://www.instant.one/privacy-policy. You can opt-out by contacting help@instant.one
Merchants should also obtain legal advice specific to their businesses.
3. Consider brand reputation when sending emails
From product pricing and visual identity to product manufacturing quality and marketing strategies, everything you do as a business impacts your brand.
Email marketing continues to be a key growth area in the United States. In 2023, 62% of marketers in the United States reported that their email marketing budget had increased in the past 12 months — the leading area relative to any other direct marketing channel.
Shopper engagement marketing is incredibly common in online retail. Even the most premium brands utilise cart abandonment marketing, discounts for returning shoppers, and other strategies to maximise customer lifetime value.
Merchants can use insights from Instant to trigger a variety of email marketing campaigns from their email marketing software. While most choose to configure each of our recommended marketing flows, some innovate and create additional flows, while others only implement a subset of our recommended flows. We encourage brands to find what is right for them, balancing business growth and brand reputation.