Direct Marketing Association (The DMA) yesterday submitted comments to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in response to its request for public comment on what constitutes “primary purpose” under the CAN-SPAM Act rulemaking. The DMA also co-signed a letter sent to the FTC by an alliance of 22 trade associations and business coalitions regarding shared principles on the rulemaking.
“The DMA is a supporter of the CAN-SPAM Act as a vital tool in the battle against spam,” said John A. Greco, Jr., president & CEO, The DMA. “As today’s comments to the FTC explain, there are several instances where the agency can provide clarity to the act in order to avoid negative unintended consequences for legitimate businesses, and also to promote better consumer experiences with e-mail.”
Specifically, The DMA requested that the FTC:
Clearly identify specific types of e-mail messages that do not have a commercial primary purpose;
Clarify how subject lines should appropriately refer to the content in the e-mail; and
Address other issues raised in the FTC’s Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM).
The DMA’s comments highlight that e-mail with more than one purpose should be treated appropriately.
One example of this is that when bills are sent via e-mail, such e-mails have a primary purpose that is “transactional or relationship,” as opposed to “commercial.” As the comments explain, irrespective of any promotional or advertising material, the primary purpose of those messages is to send bills.
According to The DMA, “Congress did not intend” the “extreme result of a consumer being able to opt out of billing statements or confirmations of transactions,” and the “economic chaos” that would ensue.
Another important area of concern for The DMA is the potential for multiple senders, such as when an online publication contains advertisements from multiple parties. According to The DMA, “the multiple-sender issue is perhaps the most perplexing and difficult of these issues to implement.”
The DMA stated that treating each individual business or product-line that is advertised in a single e-mail message as a sender would be “procedurally very complicated and would require the exchange of e-mail opt-out address lists, which creates potential privacy problems itself.” Additionally, this would result in an undesirable “blizzard of confusing opt-outs to consumers.”
The DMA recommended that this issue be resolved so that only one party is regarded as “the sender” and not each advertiser. In the aforementioned example, the online publication that sent the e-mail should be considered “the sender,” and not the advertisers within the individual e-mail.
The DMA’s complete comments are available at: www.the-dma.org/antispam
