Email advertising is not illegal - You are probably asking yourself, "What is all this talk I hear of making bulk email illegal? Why is it so controversial?" The fact is we live in a world of "spam". When you turn on the television, you are hit with unsolicited advertisements. When you get in your car and turn on the radio, you get commercials you didn't ask for.

When you check your postal mailbox you get spammed, and you didn't ask for any of it. This is not a privacy issue. If it were, the anti-spammers would be complaining about getting postal bulk mail in their mail box and about list brokers selling their mailing address.

Think about it. Why isn't there any anti-spammer extremists picketing their local post office because of bulk mail, or trying to boycott long distance companies for allowing unsolicited phone sales calls? It's because it's a money thing. If the ISP's could charge per piece for bulk email, they would run the anti-spammers out of their lobbies and close the door on them for good.

In October 2003 new EU legislation was introduced to curb the spam problem – this legislation was put in place in an attempt to stop people sending unsolicited email in bulk and as a measure to protect people's private email addresses from the vast amounts of adult and inappropriate emails. Unfortunately since 90% of the world's spam is sent from the USA the EU directive is unlikely to have much effect.

In order to stay within the law when using our lists please ensure you are following these simple guidelines:

• Always include a disclaimer stating the email has been sent to a targeted business user base as part of a one-time only broadcast.
• Ensure your email content is specific to the businesses you are emailing and not aimed at their employees. For example, a Fitness Club could email local businesses offering a corporate membership for all the companies' employees; but would be contravening legislation if the email was sent directly to the employees private email address offering a discount for them and their family. Ensuring your product/service is targeted on a B2B (Business to Business) level and not B2C (Business to Consumer) is the key.
• Never spoof your IP address or falsify sender details – this is fraudulent.
  Email marketing is an effective business tool that if used correctly will not be washed down the same drain as the deluge of spam. To date we haven't heard of anyone who has been sued or prosecuted for using B2B targeted email marketing responsibly.