FTC Nails Kodak and ICE.com for Violation of CAN-SPAM

It was bound to happen. It seems like the FTC has been wanting to nab a few legit email marketers violating the CAN-SPAM law. Last week they did it, they charged Kodak (formerly Ofoto) and ICE.com, two companies that VerticalResponse has approached in the past about retaining us for their email marketing needs.

The story? Kodak Imaging Network sent over 2 million messages and didn't have an unsubscribe mechanism or a postal address included in their emails. The outcome? They had to pony up over $26,000 in penalties. Ouch.

ICE.com's story was different. They sent an email marketing campaign to 6,000 people who had previously unsubscribed. Their penalty was a "cool" $6500.

So there you have it. If you use almost any ESP like VerticalResponse, you're ok, we ensure that you have a postal address and that the unsubscribe mechanism works indefinitely (not just the required 30 days).  We also ensure that you don't email someone who has unsubscribed using our mechanism.

(Oh, and thanks to Christopher for such a nice comment about how I had mistakenly published it was 10 days instead of 30, either way VR has you covered.)