Log In





 

Anti-Spam Policy

Permission and spam are taken very seriously at RealityMail. When requesting an account you will be asked to agree to this anti-spam policy.

Laws aren't always enough - permission counts!

There are laws that deal with the whole area of spam problems and although they go some way to provide guidelines, we feel they aren't enough. Our definition of spam constitutes what we believe is true "permission email marketing" and goes beyond what laws govern in most countries:

Spam is email sent to somebody who hasn't given their direct permission to contact them.

But that's not enough. Permission is an ambiguous word open to interpretation. To establish what does and doesn't amount to permission the following examples aim to clarify our anti-spam policy :

What kind of email addresses are OK to send to with RealityMail?

To send email to anyone using RealityMail, you must have clearly obtained their permission. This could be done through:

  • An email newsletter subscribe form on your web site
  • An opt-in checkbox on a form. This checkbox must not be checked by default, the person completing the form must willingly select the checkbox to indicate they want to hear from you
  • If someone completes an offline form like a survey or enters a competition, you can only contact them if it was explained to them that they would be contacted by email AND they ticked a box indicating they would like to be contacted
  • Customers who have purchased from you within the last 2 years
  • If someone gives you their business card and you have explained to them that you will be in touch by email, you can contact them. If they dropped their business card in a bowl at a trade show, there must be a sign indicating they will be contacted by email

Basically, you can only ever email someone who has clearly given you permission to email them specifically about the subject you're contacting them about.

What kind of email addresses ARE NOT OK to send to with RealityMail?

If it doesn't fall into any of the examples above it doesn't equal permission in our eyes, but here are some more examples to make sure we're crystal clear. By using RealityMail, you agree not to import or send to any email address which:

  • You do not have explicit, provable permission to contact in relation to the topic of the email you're sending
  • You bought, loaned, rented or in any way acquired from a third party, no matter what they claim about quality or permission. You need to obtain permission yourself
  • You haven't contacted via email in the last 2 years. Permission doesn't age well and these people have either changed email address or won't remember giving their permission in the first place
  • You scraped or copied and pasted from the web. Just because people publish their email address doesn't mean they want to hear from you

Of course, some of these people probably have given you their email address, but what's vital is their permission to be emailed commercial messages. Sending promotional emails to these people won't be effective and will quite likely see your email marked as spam by many of your recipients.

What content MUST I include in my email?

Every email you send using RealityMail must include the following:

  1. A single-click unsubscribe link that instantly removes the subscriber from your list. Once they unsubscribe, you can never email them again
  2. The name and physical address of the sender

How we'll know if you don't have permission

RealityMail has numerous layers of approval and monitoring to ensure you comply with our anti-spam policy. Here's a few of them:

  1. Until your account has been approved by a member of our team, every email you send will need to be approved
  2. Our software is directly integrated into the spam reporting systems for some of the biggest ISP's like Hotmail and AOL. If you don't have permission and someone marks your campaign as spam, we'll know about it the moment that button is pressed. If you receive a complaint rate greater than 0.25% of all recipients (that's 25 complaints for every 10,000 recipients) your account will be terminated. This is a generous figure that takes into account false spam reports
  3. All large lists imported into our software must verified. Until it's been given it the all clear, you won't be able to send to it
  4. We monitor blacklists and our abuse accounts and can pinpoint who is causing delivery problems or attracting complaints very easily

If it is discovered that you are sending email without permission, your account with RealityMail will be terminated with immediate effect.

It's all down to common sense - imagine yourself as the recipient of spam (which undoubtably you have good experience of already!) - if you don't recognise the sender or aren't interested in what they are sending, you'll think it's spam and hit delete or, worse for the sender, report it as spam. It's as black and white as that.

As you can see, we do take spam very seriously and ask that you agree to this policy as well as our Terms & Conditions before applying for an account.