Staying compliant with the Spam Act

Are you including unsubscribe links in your marketing emails? Here’s why it matters.

We want to make sure you are following the Australian Communications and Media Authority rules when communicating with clients, even one-to-one emails can count as commercial and need an easy way to unsubscribe.

Under the Spam Act 2003 (Cth), every commercial electronic message (even if non-automated like SMART marketing emails) must include a functional unsubscribe facility.

The Spam Act defines a “commercial electronic message” as any electronic message where it could be concluded that the purpose, or one of the purposes, of the message is to (among other things):

• offer to supply goods or services;
• advertise or promote goods or services;
• advertise or promote a supplier, or prospective supplier, of goods or services; or
• advertise or promote a provider, or prospective provider, of a business opportunity or investment opportunity

The Australian Communications and Media Authority enforces these rules and can issue significant fines for non-compliance.

As an example, please see the following articles in relation to:

• Latitude breaching the Spam Act when it failed to recognise that more than three million emails and texts were commercial in nature, and therefore subject to the Act (further details in the email attached); and
• CBA breaching the Spam Act by sending over 170 million marketing messages to Australians (based on unique email templates) that did not include a way to unsubscribe.