The global email marketing reach presents both opportunities and challenges for marketers. Compliance with various laws is a key issue.
Global email marketing came in with the internet. Advertisers are able to contact people all around the world as easily as locals.
This is especially true for email marketing. This global reach presents both opportunities and challenges for email marketers. These include adapting to consumers who speak different languages and accommodating cultural diversity across countries and regions.
However, understanding and complying with varying legislation and laws that offer parameters for marketing to receivers in various nations is a key problem that sometimes goes unnoticed. The CAN-SPAM Act has given guidance about commercial emails for almost two decades. It explains the requirements for email marketers.
Data privacy legislation around the world is giving more attention to this problem in recent years. This, in turn, is affecting how corporations promote to consumers and target those consumers. In addition, it is affecting their work in data collection.
In 2018, the EU began the General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR. However, GDPR is not the only recent global data privacy legislation. Because email campaign receivers may be all over the world, email marketers must address laws and regulations beyond their own country. Here are four tips for working within compliance on a global scale.
1. Know your audience.
The first thing you’d learn in an email marketing course is that a marketer’s initial step should be to analyze their target demographic. In email marketing, this entails evaluating your email list. If you already have data on each recipient’s location, it may make sense to split your lists by a variety of geographic variables.
However, if you don’t store geographic data on your email recipients, you can check with your email service provider to see if they do. This can give you a good idea of the active email list’s geographic makeup. In this case, knowing your email lists’ geographic mix can help you determine which nations to focus on when working on compliance with regional criteria.
2. Get a global compliance landscape view.
Once you know where your email recipients live, it’s time to learn the local laws.
If the majority of your recipients are in the U.S., you might focus on staying in compliance with the CAN-SPAM Act. However, if you have more recipients in the EU or other areas, it would be wise to familiarize yourself with laws like CASL, GDPR, and other regional or country-specific regulations.
If you are unsure about the rules and regulations of email marketing in your country, seek competent legal assistance. The instructions in some countries often simplify major parts of the legislation. This can make it easier for marketers to know what the regulations mean and therefore be better able to comply.
3. Find common compliance themes.
Reviewing both global email marketing specific and general data privacy legislation will reveal several common themes and requirements. For example:
- Opt-In Requirements: Depending on the restrictions, you may need a prior opt-in to send marketing emails to a recipient.
- Opt-Out Methods: Regulations will specify how recipients can opt-out or unsubscribe from future communications.
- Opt-Out Request Processing: Regulations specify how soon you must process opt-out requests.
- Sender Identification: Multiple regulations require correct sender identity.
Every rule has many other features that you should learn about. However, many of them include most or all of these four. This can help marketers to establish multi-regulation compliance procedures.
4. Have a set of marketing and compliance best practices.
Adopting a set of general email best practices is one of the most effective email marketing strategies.
Compliance with appropriate legislation is one. However, you should also focus on practices such as:
- Keeping a clean list.
- Messages to fit target audiences, the right language, etc.
- Writing concise subject lines and email content.
- Calculating your audience’s optimal email time and frequency.
These methods can increase email campaign performance and ensure long-term value from your email database. In addition, it can even save the cost of eliminating non-responsive email users.
Some Final Thoughts
Global email marketing was made possible by the internet. However, having a global market also introduces many challenges.
Aside from the language barriers, there are various local, regional, and national laws and regulations to take into account. Each of these presents a challenge to today’s email marketers.
In addition, there are complications with global health issues and political and national unrest. Certainly, today’s business world is one with many challenges, both old and new.
However, with perseverance and creativity, you can successfully navigate through these difficulties. Many businesses are thriving even in these uncertain times. Therefore, in spite of the obstacles, take these four tips to heart and start making an impact with your global email marketing.
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