IT:BD:Marketing/Transactional Email/Legal

The CAN-SPAM act is pretty straightforward.

• Transactional emails do not require unsubscribe links;
• promotional emails, do.

This make sense. For operational or for legal reasons it may not be viable for a business to suppress certain notifications (e.g., financial notifications, legal notifications).

There are some emails where the nature of the content is gray. For example, it's possible to put promotional material in a transactional email. There are some guidelines the FTC provides but it's mostly common sense. If an email is predominantly transactional but has a tad bit of promotional content, it's OK. But an email that is substantially promotional should be treated as such. Use your good judgement here because the fines are stiff.

Here is the FTC's Q&A page: http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus61-can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business

And here are the Two Q's that are most explanatory.

Q. How do I know if what I’m sending is a transactional or relationship message?

A. The primary purpose of an email is transactional or relationship if it consists only of content that: facilitates or confirms a commercial transaction that the recipient already has agreed to; gives warranty, recall, safety, or security information about a product or service; gives information about a change in terms or features or account balance information regarding a membership, subscription, account, loan or other ongoing commercial relationship; provides information about an employment relationship or employee benefits; or delivers goods or services as part of a transaction that the recipient already has agreed to.

Q. What if the message combines commercial content and transactional or relationship content?

A. It’s common for email sent by businesses to mix commercial content and transactional or relationship content. When an email contains both kinds of content, the primary purpose of the message is the deciding factor. Here’s how to make that determination: If a recipient reasonably interpreting the subject line would likely conclude that the message contains an advertisement or promotion for a commercial product or service or if the message’s transactional or relationship content does not appear mainly at the beginning of the message, the primary purpose of the message is commercial. So, when a message contains both kinds of content – commercial and transactional or relationship – if the subject line would lead the recipient to think it’s a commercial message, it’s a commercial message for CAN-SPAM purposes. Similarly, if the bulk of the transactional or relationship part of the message doesn’t appear at the beginning, it’s a commercial message under the CAN-SPAM Act.