Anti-Spam Policy
Intellegentia Ltd provides email campaigns and market research using our ProAgency and Digital Marketing Club Services (“digital services”). Intellegentia supports ONLY permission-based marketing practices.
Intellegentia Ltd has implemented various policies and procedures to:
- Encourage permission-based marketing.
- Help prevent its “digital services” from being used for the purpose of unsolicited email campaigns.
- Respond to all complaints suggesting that its (“digital services”) have been used as a vehicle to send unsolicited email.
Spam is unsolicited commercial email, junk mail or bulk mail that has not been requested by the recipient. In addition to being perceived as intrusive, irrelevant and often offensive, it is also typical that spam emails do not contain an option to unsubscribe from the mailing list. Simply put, spam is the opposite of permission-based emails — those that are requested, anticipated, personal and relevant.
Encouraging the Creation of Opt-in Distribution Lists:
Opt-in List Building — Intellegentia’s (“digital services”) enables clients to put an “Opt-in” form on their website. This feature collects and stores an unlimited number of permission-based recipients, seamlessly and at no cost.
“Send to a Friend” can be added to each email, encouraging the possibility of building a list through referrals from existing clients. Referral marketing is more likely to succeed than a regular email campaign because the email is personal, relevant and of interest to the recipient. It encourages people to send useful emails and attaches their personal information and email address to it so any reply email goes back to the sender. These forwarded emails can also contain a “subscribe now” link.
Double Opt-in — All (“digital services”) clients can use an extra security feature in which an email address is not added to the recipient list until a confirmation email is sent and a reply is received.
The terms and conditions of using the (“digital services”) require our clients not to send unsolicited emails, spam or offensive emails. Our clients are responsible for all information, data, text, photographs, graphics video, messages or other materials (“content”) posted or delivered via the (“digital services”).
It is the client’s responsibility to confirm the source of the data and to ensure that all contacts have opted in to receiving emails communications from them.
In addition to randomly screening uploaded lists, we assist customers in uploading their email distribution lists using the (“Digital Services”). As part of our customer service initiative, it is useful for the client but also allows us to view the contents of a distribution list — with the customer’s permission.
Intellegentia uses training and education resources to educate our clients about the proper use of email marketing and how to market successfully without ever resorting to non permission-based practices.
As customers use our system we track success, failure and number of complaints. Our account managers closely work with our clients to ensure they have a trouble free experience and deal with any complaints immediately.
Software Control Tools
Intellegentia’s (“digital services”) polices and practices demand that our clients include an “unsubscribe” process in every email campaign.
Unsubscribes can be requested via a link in each email or by replying to the email with ‘Unsubscribe’ in the subject line. This provides even off-line readers the ability to request an unsubscribe at any time.
Anyone who “unsubscribes” via the “unsubscribe” link in an email will be immediately automatically flagged in the database and their email address will be suppressed from all future mailings from that client. Unsubscribed contacts cannot be changed by list merging or manual intervention by the client. Contacts can only re-subscribed by submitting a written request to reinstated, which will then be submitted to Intellegentia for review and action.
Detailed individual reporting highlights bounces and “unsubscribes” against the recipient’s email address. To further protect recipients from email abuse, contacts receiving email from Intellegentia (“digital services”) users will only see their own details in the “To” field. All other recipients’ email addresses are not viewable.
Technical
We honour emerging ISP protocols (restrictions on number of connections, size of pipe, speed of sending servers, open relay off, reverse DNS enabled, RFC compliance). Following these protocols ensures that we are a respected email generator and we are working to protect the integrity of ISP networks without undue burden. We are a polite sender of emails — we distinguish between soft and hard bounces. Hard bounces are immediately flagged and suppressed from future mailings. Soft bounce retries are limited to four attempts over several days.
Dealing with Complaints
Intellegentia takes permission marketing very seriously. Notwithstanding the entire preventative measures outlined in the section above, occasionally we do receive complaints from recipients of a customer’s email campaign. When a complaint is received the following process is followed:
- Every complaint that is received gets read and acted upon to by one of our employees.
- Where the email address of the complainant is known, it will be immediately unsubscribed from the relevant customer list by a Intellegentia employee, not left to the discretion of the customer. This is not negotiable.
- Where the email address of the complainant is known, they will be notified that their email address has been removed from that client’s list. If the complaint came via an ISP, they too will be notified of the action taken.
- If the complaints continue on subsequent mailings or if the first mailing generates a certain percentage of complaints, the customer’s account will be suspended or terminated.
- Our license agreement gives us the right to publish the names of any customer who has been terminated because of spam complaints. We share this information with other permission-based providers to reduce the probability that the abuser will simply take their business to another provider and get past their controls.