Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM) – a spinoff of Domain Keys, you also get this with using an email service provider.
Double Opt-In – a synonym for Confirmed Opt-In, defined earlier in this article series.
Electronic Commerce Protection Act (ECPA) – this is the Canadian law regulating commercial email. It is virtually identical to the CAN-SPAM act (defined earlier in these articles) but with one addition. You must have “implied consent” to send commercial email (the CAN-SPAM act doesn’t require this). What this means is you must have some existing relationship in the past 18 months before emailing prospects.
“Implied consent” is a bit of a grey area currently since this law was introduced recently in April 2009. You could say that because you have someone’s business card they have given you implied consent to send them solicitations because they’ve provided you with their contact info. In any case, the definite requirements of ECPA are: be truthful about who you are in terms of your sender email, don’t use deceptive subject lines to get more people reading your emails, include a physical mailing address in the email’s body (your email signature will suffice – this term is explained later on), and honor all ‘remove from list’ requests within 10 days. These are all good business practices to follow in any case.
Email Encryption – this is a little known feature available in most email software today. This feature encrypts your email content so it can’t be deciphered if anyone happens to intercept your email en route to its recipient. This can be used if you ever have to send any confidential or sensitive information such as signed contracts or any financial information. NEVER send any financial information via email with encrypting it first. If at all possible, provide this information through other means such as over the phone or through a secure web page. With e-commerce transactions you can know a web page is encrypted and therefore secure by looking for the little yellow lock somewhere in the bottom right of your web browser. If you don’t see this lock, then sending any confidential information is just as dangerous as sending it through unencrypted email.
Email Filters – this is a very useful tool for keep your email organized. Email Filters allows you to specify rules on how incoming emails should be handled. For instance, if you receive any newsletter type mailings you may want to setup a rule so any emails from this company are automatically directed into a folder setup for that company for later reference.
