• by Chad White , January 10, 2008

There's no serious talk of revising the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, but one of the constant fears is that Congress will narrow the window during which companies must honor opt-outs. The buzz has been that lawmakers will reduce the current window of 10 business days (14 days) down to three days. While I've heard several marketers fret about that possibility, the Email Experience Council's latest research indicates that most marketers will be able to comply with that narrower window should it be enacted.

We'll soon be releasing the Retail Email Unsubscribe Benchmark Study, which looks at the opt-out practices of 94 of the top online retailers, including how long it takes them to honor opt-outs. We found that 86% honored opt-out requests within three days, with many of those retailers honoring the requests immediately, as evidenced by the high proportion of retailers that sent no more emails after receiving the request. Another 4% honored opt-outs within seven days, and another 3% within the CAN-SPAM-mandated 14 days. The remaining 4% either didn't honor opt-outs in time or didn't honor them at all because of technical failures.

The EEC is also currently running a one-question survey on its homepage that asks marketers how long they need in order to honor opt-outs. Currently 82% of respondents have indicated that they can honor opt-outs within three days, roughly in line with our study results.

The results of both the study and the ongoing survey are proof of how the email marketing industry has matured in the wake of the CAN-SPAM Act in terms of technical ability. It's surely also a sign of the need to respect consumers' inboxes or face spam complaints and deliverability problems. For those retailers and other businesses that take longer than three days to honor unsubscribes, this should be a wakeup call to tighten up your processes to keep up with the rising standards in the industry.

Of course, while retailers excelled at quick unsubscribes, there were a few areas where their opt-out processes were lacking, like providing consumers with alternatives to actually unsubscribing. For more on that and much more, check out the study when it's released in a week or two. Or better yet, register for the EEC's Email Evolution Conference in San Diego next month, as every attendee will get a copy of the report for free. Hope to see you there.