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Channel: Digital Spin by Harland Clarke Digital » Email best practices
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Can We Legally Email People Who Attended Our Event or Visited Our Booth?

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One of the questions we receive from clients and prospects is whether or not the client can legally email individuals who:

(1.) came to one of their sponsored events or stopped by their booth and provided their business card and/or email address

and

(2.) did not explicitly grant permission their to be emailed.

It’s a good question.

While we do not provide legal opinions, we get this question a lot and have actually gotten a “best practice” opinion from the EEC. It essentially says that you can do it but be sure to reference the event (name, dates and times and location) with as much specificity as you can so that the message becomes transactional versus promotional.  This content and specificity should be included in your very first sentence.  The second sentence should reference the fact that you appreciate the recipient stopping by your booth or dropping off their business card and that you’re following up with them as a result of that action.  In a way there’s an implicit opt-in…by having given you their card or the fact that you swiped their badge, one could argue that they have implicitly opted in to receive your messages.

I’d also (to be on the safe side) point out to them that you will be sending them some follow up materials via email in the next few (days/weeks) and that they can always opt out of any further communications from you by clicking the link below or the opt-out link contained in all subsequent emails.

The order of content in this email is extremely important. It should begin by identifying the specific relationship the individual has with you, the reason(s) the relationship exists and the fact that this relationship resulted from some specific behavior the recipient took.

Then and only then can the message get into the more promotional aspects. As a transactional message, the amount of promotional content you’re allowed to include is capped at 20%.  So don’t overdo the promotional content beyond that 20% limit and, on a more positive note, see if there is a creative way of linking the promotion to the event with special offers such as:  “Because you attended our seminar/stopped by our booth, we’re pleased to offer you XXX for the next 30 days.”  Following these simple guidelines should keep you out of trouble and should limit the number and percentage of recipients who label your message as SPAM and thereby affect your digital reputation.

However, “should” is a scary word.  So one last recommendation is to test the approach using all of the above tactics with a much smaller but representative sample of the audience.  The results of your test will get you on more solid ground, minimize your downside risk and mitigate potential damage to your reputation.

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