Anti-Spam Policy

This policy is applicable to all the services provided by Mailercloud is for sending and tracking permission-based, opt-in email marketing campaigns (“Services”). If you're reading this, you're most likely not a spammer. However, legitimate email marketers are frequently accused of spamming, and we want to avoid this for our customers. We are aware of our responsibilities as good Internet citizens and are committed to protecting other Internet citizens' privacy rights. As a result, if you use Mailercloud, you must read and understand our Anti-SPAM policies and agree to our Terms and Conditions. There is no such thing as a 'bought opt-in list.' So, if you purchased an email list of any kind, please do not upload it to Mailercloud or plan to send email to those contacts through Mailercloud, as this is a violation of our Anti-SPAM policy and will result in a fine.

How Mailercloud Defines Spam

Spam is any promotion, information, or solicitation sent via email to a person who has not explicitly given you the permission to send emails to them. Any email campaign that does not comply with the CAN-SPAM requirements or any other applicable requirments, includes prohibited content, and/or is similar to any of the SPAM examples below.

Examples of Spam

• Any email message that is sent to a recipient who previously signed up to receive newsletters, product information or any other type of bulk email, but later opted-out by informing the sender that they did not want to receive an additional email, then that email is spam.
• Any email message that is sent to a recipient without providing an opt-out or a method to request that future mailings not be sent to them, is spam.
• Any email message without a valid email address in the from line is spam.
• Any email message that contains any false or misleading information in the header, subject line or message itself is spam.
• An email campaign that is sent and later receives what Mailercloud deems to be ‘excessive’ spam complaints from recipients, may be considered spam. If this occurs, you may be contacted by Mailercloud support with a request to make specific changes to your email before sending additional campaigns.

Prohibited Content Spam

Mailercloud is not to be used to send anything offensive, to promote anything illegal, or to harass anyone. The following list includes examples of content that are prohibited:

• Pornography, adult content, escort or dating services, or content promoting adult novelty items.
• Material that exploits children or discloses personal information of children below the age of 18.
• Materials selling or promoting illegal products, drugs or substances.
• Material that is grossly offensive or threatening.
• Content that introduces viruses, worms, harmful code and/or trojan horses on the internet.
• Content that violates the FTC’s CAN-SPAM Law.
• Material that encourages violence against any governments, groups or individuals.
• Affiliate marketing or multi-level marketing products and/or services.
• List broker or list rental services

What does not constitute a Spam?

Below are examples of content that is *not* considered SPAM:

• Anytime an organization sends a mass email message to its present and/or past customers, it is NOT spam provided that the organization offers a way for the customer to opt-out of future mailings and that the customer did not previously opt-out.
• An email message is NOT spam if the recipients in anyway requested email to be sent to them from the sender or the sender’s organization and they have not opted-out of your list.
• An email message is NOT spam when sent to recipients who agreed to receive information or promotions from a partner organization (as long as there is a clear opt-out option).
• An email message is not spam if it abides by Mailercloud’s terms of service and is sent to a recipient who attended a show, event, function, webinar or similar, and they have provided you with their email address and contact information with the understanding that they may receive future correspondence and the recipient did not previously opt-out.
• A message is NOT spam if it is sent to addresses that have been properly collected using opt-in or double-opt-in policies from your website, or from a partner site, or through a co-registration site/form, so long as the recipients are made aware at the time of sign up that they may receive emails from third parties.
• All emails must include a relevant title, from and reply-to address that is a valid email address, and the bricks ‘n mortar, physical address and phone number.

Any customer that sends spam is in violation of this Policy.

Avoiding Spam Related Problems

It’s in our best interest to keep our system clean, because our reputation and our Customers’ deliverability depends on it. If you are a spammer and do not abide by our terms of service, we reserve the right to terminate your account immediately and without refund. So here’s what we do:

Required Elements on Every Mass Email

We require that each email message sent out from Mailercloud includes an easy way for subscribers to remove themselves via an unsubscribe link. If a recipient contacts our offices and requests to be manually removed from a customer’s list, we will manually unsubscribe the recipient from our customer’s account.

Every email marketing campaign sent through Mailercloud must contain:

• An accurate and proper subject line.
• A valid Unsubscribe / Opt-out link to all campaigns. This is required. Removing this from a message is a violation of Mailercloud’s policies.
• The sender’s valid postal address.
• The sender’s valid phone (optional but highly recommended)
• Appropriate content – please see below.

We also require that each email message comply with CAN-SPAM laws.

Right to Review Email Marketing Campaigns and Contact Lists

Mailercloud, including our employees and independent contractors, are permitted to copy and transmit copies of the content from your email campaigns to develop algorithms, heuristics and computer programs (“Tools”) to help us more efficiently spot problem accounts and to use such tools, together with personal viewing by employees and or independent contractors, to discover individuals who violate either these Terms of Use or applicable law. We also reserve the right to analyze and monitor your contact lists for possible bad, invalid or spamtrap addresses.

Feedback Loops w/ISPs

Mailercloud has established relationships with most major ISPs. We’re on feedback loops (FBL) and reporting systems with several these ISPs and anti-spam organizations, including:

• AOL
• Yahoo
• Comcast
• Earthlink
• Hotmail/MSN/Outlook
• Roadrunner
• United Online (Juno/NetZero, etc.)
• SpamCop

When a recipient clicks their “this is spam” button in their email program, a FBL report is sent to us. We analyze the data, trace it back to the sender that caused the complaint, remove the complainer from the sender’s list, and track future complaints about that campaign. If complaints exceed a reasonable threshold based on list size, we take appropriate to keep our servers clean and off blacklists. To prevent this from happening to you, please read and ensure you abide by our terms of service and our anti-spam policies.

Mailercloud’s Complaint Response Process

We are here to help our customers maximize the efficiency of their email marketing campaigns, educate them as to the best email practices, and help them to avoid spam complaints. If you have any questions or feedback regarding our anti-spam policy, please do not hesitate to contact our abuse and SPAM department directly at: [email protected]

How we deal with complaints

Even though a customer may not be sending spam, complaints may still be received by Mailercloud from a customer’s recipients. It is Mailercloud’s policy to respond to every abuse complaint, so that the complainant knows his/her address was not harvested, sold or otherwise improperly added to a customer’s lists. The Mailercloud Abuse staff takes the following steps anytime a complaint is received:

• Contacts the Email Manager for the customer’s account with a Mailercloud Abuse Inquiry. This inquiry will ask the customer to confirm the list source, in general, and also to provide all specific information available regarding the particular email address in question. Customers should respond within two business days of receiving an Abuse Inquiry from Mailercloud. Failure to respond to the Abuse Inquiry is in itself a violation of this policy. Failure to provide all requested information about the email address in question is a violation of this policy. The customer may not respond directly to the complainant without prior approval from Mailercloud’s Abuse staff.
• The Mailercloud Abuse team reviews the customer’s response and the entire complaint and determines whether or not the customer is in compliance with this policy.
• Mailercloud will respond to the complainant. As long as the customer has been adhering to this policy, Mailercloud will respond to the complainant and reassure him that his email address has been unsubscribed from future mailings. We carbon copy the customer on our response to the complainant.
• Should the customer be found to be in violation of this policy, the customer will receive a spam determination response from our Abuse team with specific information related to the violation.

Please Report Bad Senders

If you are reporting SPAM, please forward the contents of the offending information, including all header information to the following address:

[email protected]