Regulations controlling the use of commercial email came into force on 11th December 2003 and the reference documents is known as The Electronic Commerce EC Directive Regulations SI2002/2013. During 2003 we communicated with Stephen Timms MP who was at that time the Minister for Energy and Commerce at the Department of Trade and Industry who was very helpful and brought our attention to a number of issues.
Individual Subscribers
- private individuals & sole traders.
You can send commercial email to Individual Subscribers providing that they
have notified you that they agree to receive your emails. Normally this is
done using opt-in online forms but offline acceptances are also common.
There is an exception to the opt-in requirement: If the recipient has already given his or her email address direct to the sender in the context of the purchase of a product or service, emails that relate to similar products or services are permissible. There must be an opt out mechanism in the email.
However, if you are the organiser of for instance a car club or a horse riding club you can send to whoever you want providing that your emails are non-commercial. If you intend to make a habit of sending a lot of emails on this basis you are best advised to adopt the commercial approach and keep your friends.
Commercial Subscribers
In effect you can send an email to a commercial email address as you wish. You must however not attempt to conceal your sender email address or your identity and you must provide a valid email address as an opt-out link. If recipients choose to opt out you must remove them from your list.
It makes no sense at all to send emails to people who do not want to receive them and our policy is therefore to remove them manually or, if using our automated system, let the system immediatley remove them from your database.
There are issues relating to lists composed before December 2003 but it is very unlikely that such old email addresses would have any validity now. To access the official documents click here.
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