Glossary Compliance
CAN-SPAM Act rules for cold email
General information, not legal advice. Check with your own counsel for your situation.
The CAN-SPAM Act is the US federal law, enforced by the FTC, that sets rules for commercial email, including business to business email, such as honest headers and subject lines, a valid postal address and a working opt-out honored within 10 business days.
The FTC summarizes the main requirements as: do not use false or misleading header information or deceptive subject lines, identify the message as an ad where it is one, include your valid physical postal address, explain how to opt out, honor opt-outs within 10 business days, and monitor anyone emailing on your behalf.
CAN-SPAM does not require prior consent to send commercial email in the US, but each violating email can carry a penalty.
Why it matters
- It applies to every commercial email you send to US recipients, B2B included.
- Penalties are counted per email, so mistakes multiply.
- Its rules (honest, identifiable, easy to stop) are also what gets replies.
How Reach Crew handles it
Every first email from Reach Crew ends with your business postal address and a plain way to opt out, and Reach Crew will not send a first email until your postal address is set. It also adds one-click unsubscribe headers and stops all follow-ups on any opt-out. You are still responsible for what you send.
Related terms
- Unsubscribe. An unsubscribe, or opt-out, is a way for a recipient to tell a sender to stop emailing them, which the sender...
- One-click unsubscribe. One-click unsubscribe is an email standard (RFC 8058) in which the sender adds List-Unsubscribe and...
- GDPR and consent. Under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), you need a lawful basis to process someone's personal...
- Do-not-contact list. A do-not-contact list, or suppression list, is a list of people or addresses that must never be emailed again...