New Regulations are coming for email marketing.

Two recent actions by the FTC, as well as new privacy legislation that is being bandied about in the house of representatives, indicates that email marketers will soon find not only new regulations, but reinterpretation of old ones, that will have an impact on email marketing, and in turn on all direct marketing conducted online.

There are several provisions slipped into a proposed bill under the guise of online privacy that are quite worrisome for the marketing community, according to panelists at the annual Email Experience Council’s legislative update.

Privacy legislation introduced in a bill during May, by members of the US House of Representatives, would require notice to and consent from any individual prior to collecting or using personally identifiable information, including email.

The DMA has opposed this bill explaining it “has potentially sweeping impact for direct marketers” by requiring notice and consent from individuals prior to any collection, use or disclosure of information. As of the time of writing, there are no exclusions within the bill.

At the Email Experience Councils legislative webinar, according to the DMA’s VP of Government Relations, this impacts nearly all first party senders (those to whom the lead orginally opted in), as well as any other third party company that has access to that data, which proposes coverage of an extensive list of “unique and persistant” personal consumer data.

Another panelist, the Chief Privacy Officer at Return Path, said in particular, that the scope of covered data, which includes “unique identifiers” everything from email address to ip address, is quite worrisome. “If the exceptions for transactional and operational purposes and for service providers are not effective and clear, this bill could interfere with many industry collaborations. This includes IP-based reputation systems – data that determines if email messages reach the inbox or not. It may also impact the operation of Feedback Loops provided to email senders by mailbox providers like Yahoo! and Hotmail. These feedback loops are a key component in how the industry keeps bad actors out of the email ecosystem.”

There is also legislation to expand the powers of the FTC, which could have broad impact on the industry. They are already expanding their reach into all things cyberspace. In their recent actions with regards to email, they have indicated they have a problem with personalized subject lines that imply “personal familiarity” with a person, or anything else that may be intrepreted as misleading.

What are some of the things that the FTC doesn’t like?

Moving forward it will be important for your business to keep an eye on these moves and adjust your business practices accordingly as some of the things covered here are currently common practice in online marketing campaigns.

You can also review more commentary on the specifics of the proposed regulations here at the blog of Return Path executive Tom Bartel on their site.