smallbusiness.co.uk: Helping your business think big

E-mail marketing may be an essential tool for SMEs on a tight budget, but it is gaining a bad name as its growing use is shadowed due to the ever-increasing deluge of spam landing in consumers' in-boxes.

To tackle the problem, a group of leading on-line marketeers have banded together to form a new regulatory body - the eMail Marketing association (eMMa) - to promote best practice regarding the commercial use of e-mail addresses. It also wants to stamp out spam (the unsolicited sending of commercial e-mails).

Advertisers, advertising agencies and internet service suppliers are required to voluntarily self-impose the eMMa codes of practice, in much the same way as the Committee of Advertising Practice writes and enforces the British guidance on advertising and sales promotion. Businesses which adhere to the code will be provided with an eMMa kite mark, one with which consumers will be able to identify.

The idea is that in this way both consumer confidence in e-commerce is boosted, and consumers' rights to privacy are taken into proper consideration - a win-win situation all around, as business's sales could go up, and consumers would stop getting the e-mails they're not interested in.
eMMa's charter lays out procurement guidelines and differentiates between the opting-in and opting-out methods of receiving commercial e-mails. It outlines a position on privacy policies and data protection requirements, and makes recommendations on what should be stated in an e-mail and how it should be formatted. For example, the relevance of content to the recipient, the identity of the sender and the ability to deregister from an e-mail list should all be obvious.

Its founding members are 24/7, All Response Media, Claritas Interactive, Consodata (Yoptin), digital Impact, Doubleclick, e2 communications europe, eDesigns.co.uk, Emailbureau (MyOffers.co.uk and OK-mail) eMailcom, E-Mail Vision, Frontwire and Mailtrack.

To find out about the charter in more detail and to join the eMail Marketing association, visit www.emmacharter.org .

With thanks to Lloyds TSB Success4Business. For more news and information visit www.success4business.com .

(20/7/01)

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