• by Dianna Dilworth , May 3, 2013

Email marketing across country borders requires marketers to follow the regulations in every country that they do business in. In a panel on privacy at the Email Insider Summit, David Fowler, chief privacy and deliverability officer at Act-On Software, gave a quick cheat sheet tip on how to operate. “Two words in the US, op out. Everywhere else on the planet, opt in."

As a marketer, if you are collecting email addresses and doing business in a country, then you need to comply with that country's laws. Germany, for instance, believes that every piece of information belongs to the customer down to the bounce. Len Shneyder, senior marketing manager at Message Bus, said that he met with a German postmaster who said that he would love to give marketers a feedback loop, but the customer owns the bounce, so he can't.

Shneyder also explained the importance of data sovereignty, which means that marketers are subject to the laws of the country in which they store their data. "There are high walls that start at country and your data is subject to the laws of the countries," said Shneyder, who pointed out that some countries require cloud providers to be co-located within the country where the business is run. "It is like a local mentality being applied to the global cloud," he said.

To deal with the importance of privacy, Ellen Watkins, manager, Global Database Marketing Programs, National Instruments said that her company trains all of their employees in privacy. "It's not just one slide, it is a module," she said.