Implied permission

Codified into law in CASL, implied permission describes the situation where a company can legally mail someone. The law includes caveats and restrictions about when this is a legitimate assumption on the part of the company. It is, in fact, a kludge. There isn’t such a thing as implied permission. Someone either gives you permission to send them email or they don’t.
We use the term implied permission to describe a situation where the recipient didn’t actually ask for the mail, but isn’t that bothered about receiving it. The mail is there. If it has a particularly good deal the recipient might buy something. The flip side of not being bothered about receiving mail, is not being bothered about not receiving mail. If it’s not there, eh,  no biggie.

Implied permission isn’t real permission, no matter what the law says.
Now, many deliverability folks, including myself, understand that there are recipients who don’t mind getting mail from vendors. We know this is a valid and effective way of marketing. Implied permission is a thing and doesn’t always hurt delivery.
However, that does not mean that implied permission is identical to explicit permission. It’s one of the things I think CASL gets very right. Implied permission has a shelf life and expires. Explicit permission doesn’t have a shelf life.
Implied permission is real, but not a guarantee that the recipient really wants a particular email from a sender, even if they want other emails from that sender.

Permission isn’t binary.

In the marketing space we talk about permission as if it’s a binary status. Either we have permission to send email or we don’t. But that doesn’t reflect the complexity of marketing programs. Maybe a recipient wants a password reset email and the occasional social alert, but doesn’t want the weekly newsletter. One recipient might be OK with 3 emails a day, while another would like one a week.
It’s a rare case where this granular permission is collected upfront. And there’s good reason for that, too much choice overwhelms and it’s better to limit options.

Opens aren’t permission.

We’ve fallen down a hole where opens have turned into this proxy for permission. I think that’s why so many people freak out when they discover that sometimes spamtraps will load image pixels or follow links in emails. But following a link or loading an image isn’t permission. It might be interest. It’s even interest from the person running the spamtrap, but not necessarily the good kind of interest.  Or it could simply be that the user needs their password so they opened the password mail.
An open / image load is not permission. At best it means that the recipient can load images in emails they open. Maybe they actually even enjoy it and will enjoy future emails. But it’s not permission. Now, from enough engagement data we can assume that the recipient wants to receive email. But that’s still implied permission at best.

Now what?

What is we keep doing what we’re doing. Making the best decisions about marketing programs with the information we have. It’s all we really can do in the now. But, as we look to how we want our marketing to grow and improve we must look at the whole picture. Marketers have the data to make good decisions, but only if they ask the right questions.
 
 
 

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From the archives: Taking Permission

From February 2010, Taking Permission.

Permission is always a hot topic in email marketing. Permission is key! the experts tell us. Get permission to send email! the ISPs tell us.
Marketers have responded by setting up processes to “get” permission from recipients before adding them to mailing lists. They point to their privacy polices and signup forms and say “Look! the recipient gave us permission.”
In many cases, though, the permission isn’t given to the sender, permission is taken from the recipient.
Yes, permission is being TAKEN by the sender. At the point of address collection many senders set the default to be the recipient gets mail. These processes take any notion of giving permission out of the equation. The recipient doesn’t have to give permission, permission is assumed.
This isn’t real permission. No process that requires the user to take action to stop themselves from being opted in is real permission. A default state of yes takes the actual opt-in step away from the recipient.
Permission just isn’t about saying “well, we told the user if they gave us an email address we’d send them mail and they gave us an email address anyway.” Permission is about giving the recipients a choice in what they want to receive. All too often senders take permission from recipients instead of asking for permission to be given.
Since that post was originally written, some things have changed.
CASL has come into effect. CASL prevents marketers from taking permission as egregiously as what prompted this post. Under CASL, pre-checked opt-in boxes do not count as explicit permission. The law does have a category of implicit permission, which consists of an active consumer / vendor relationship. This implicit permission is limited in scope and senders have to stop mailing 2 years after the last activity.
The other change is in Gmail filters. Whatever they’re doing these days seems to really pick out mail that doesn’t have great permission. Business models that would work a few years ago are now struggling to get to the inbox at Gmail. Many of these are non-relationship emails – one off confirmations, tickets, receipts. There isn’t much of a relationship between the sender and the recipient, so the filters are biased against the mail.
Permission is still key, but these days I’m not sure even informed permission is enough.

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CASL is more privacy law than anti-spam law

Michael Geist, a law professor in Canada, writes about the new CASL law, why it’s necessary and why it’s more about privacy and consumer protection than just about spam.

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October 2016: The Month in Email

We’ve returned from London, where I spoke at the Email Innovations Summit and enjoyed a bit of vacation. My wrap-up post also mentions an article I wrote for the Only Influencers site, which looks at questions I get asked frequently: “Why does spam make it to the inbox and our legitimate marketing email doesn’t? Should we just copy their tactics?”
Parliament2ForBlog
In industry news, Yahoo caught our attention for two surprising moves: disabling forwarding and — much more disturbing — creating software for intelligence agencies to search customer email.
Some legal updates this month: The Second Court of Appeals upheld an earlier ruling that companies are in fact liable for the activities of their affiliates, including spam and fraudulent claims. This is important, as we often see spammers and cybercriminals use affiliates to distance themselves from these activities. We also saw another fine assessed for a violation of CASL, and noted with appreciation the transparency and thoughtful process that the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) demonstrates in explaining their actions.
Another excellent report is the one created by the Exploratorium to explain their recent experience with being phished. It’s a good piece to share with your organization, in that it reminds us that these cybercriminals are exploiting not just our technology but our trust-based connections to our friends and colleagues. It’s important to raise awareness about social engineering as a part of information security. And speaking of email security, we were delighted to note that André Leduc received the 2016 J.D. Falk award this month at M3AAWG for his excellent work on this topic. It’s a fitting legacy to our friend, J.D., who died five years ago this month. We miss him.
Finally, we’d be remiss in observing Halloween without a post about zombies. Feel free to read it aloud in your spookiest voice.

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