UK Law
The UK law on business to business e-mail marketing is set out in The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003.
From P.28:
How do the Regulations apply to business to business marketing by electronic mail?
Your obligations are as follows:
- You must not conceal your identity when you send, or instigate the sending of a marketing message by electronic mail to anyone (including corporate subscribers) and
- You must provide a valid address to which the recipient (including corporate subscribers) can send an opt-out request
As of the 1st January 2007 a European law, known as the First Company Law Amendment Directive, was brought into UK Law by The Companies (Registrar, Languages and Trading Disclosures) Regulations 2006 . This amends Section 349(a) of the 1985 Companies Act (which requires a company’s name, registered office, and registration place and number to be placed on correspondence) to amended adding the words: ” References in this section to a document of any type are to a document of that type in hard copy, electronic or any other form.” Such information should now therefore be included in email messages.
USA LAW
USA Law is more complex, you may have to consider individual state laws
Federal Law relating to e-mail marketing
A summary of the federal law under the above act:
- You must not give misleading header information. Your email’s “From,” “To,” and routing information must be accurate.
- Deceptive subject lines must not be used.
- You must provide a return email address or another Internet-based mechanism that allows a recipient to ask you not to send future email messages to that email address, and you must honor the requests.
- It requires that commercial email be identified as an advertisement and include the sender’s valid physical postal address.