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New Etsy.com CEO breaks CAN-SPAM law on first email. Great
- dqv 9y agoI think it's considered transactional/relationship, so exempt from CAN-SPAM
- fhood 9y ago"Transactional or relationship content – which facilitates an already agreed-upon transaction or updates a customer about an ongoing transaction;" From ftc website. This doesn't seem to fall under that category. Edit: More from site. A. The primary purpose of an email is transactional or relationship if it consists only of content that: facilitates or confirms a commercial transaction that the recipient already has agreed to; gives warranty, recall, safety, or security information about a product or service; gives information about a change in terms or features or account balance information regarding a membership, subscription, account, loan or other ongoing commercial relationship; provides information about an employment relationship or employee benefits; or delivers goods or services as part of a transaction that the recipient already has agreed to.
- eli 9y agoIf you're a member of Etsy, then you have an ongoing commercial relationship with the site and this is an update on that relationship. People also generally interpret "deliver goods or services as part of a transaction" pretty broadly especially if the user agreed to receive emails from you when they signed up.
- justinclift 9y agoBecause they had a change of staff member? Really... who cares, that doesn't give them an excuse to spam people about it.
- benburleson 9y agoThat example definitely seems like marketing, or at least brand-building and not relevant to anything the recipient requested.
- justinclift 9y agoFor me, his email came from "Etsy <emails@mail.etsy.com>" and the included reply-to was "Etsy <donotreply@etsy.com>". That's clearly an indication of literally no relationship, assuming you're meaning a two way one. If you're meaning a one way relationship though, then sure. ;) As a data point, I also immediately considered it spam and it futher reduced my (already fairly low) impression of Etsy.
- mkmk 9y agoYes, a bit annoying. But sometimes you can give people a little break, delete the email, and move on. Unfortunately, expecting one's inbox to be as pristine as a sacred temple is no longer realistic.
- mitchellshow 9y agoIANAL but fairly certain that's transactional, not a commercial message
- xxr 9y agoNAL either, but is it truly transactional if the apparent sender is a donotreply?
- eli 9y agoI don't see why the value of the Reply-To address would affect that.
- somid3 9y agoBecause you can also unsubscribe by replying "unsubscribe if there is no link. Part of CAN-SPAM.
- cmdrfred 9y agoTransaction would seem to imply a two way communication. trans·ac·tion an exchange or interaction between people.
- xxr 9y agoI think you're correct--someone else in the comments pasted the FTC's definition of "transactional," and the transaction in question may be an already initiated commercial transaction, not an interactive transaction between two parties on email like I had thought.
- lucasmullens 9y agoSeems like an honest mistake, but I am a bit surprised whatever system they have in place for email doesn't do this automatically.
- somid3 9y agoPrecisely. I believe it was on purpose.
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoIt speaks of a dysfunctional organisation IMO. Surely the CEO didn't send this out without it passing through an editing process and through some IT people (if they did then that may be worse). Why didn't they flag the issue? Are they incompetent; too afraid?? Regardless of whether there's a strict requirement to meet CAN-SPAM _all_ company emails should be following the spirit of that regulation, even those sent out in less regulated jurisdictions.
- bentruyman 9y agoI hate reactions like this. You've deduced that Etsy.com is likely a "dysfunctional organisation" for the mistake of missing an "Unsubscribe" link in a single email. If that's all it takes, we certainly live in an incredibly dysfunctional world (which is sort of true, I guess). Way too often I see people in this industry pretend as though everyone else is expected to conform to the strictest of standards yet the same rules never seem to apply to our own self-created fires. "Google Apps is down! Clearly Google has some quality control issues!" Or maybe a well-intentioned human made a small unhandled error.
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoThe are a few possible scenarios but none of them look good to me: how do you think it's possible for a CEO to send out emails without, presumably, them being checked for legislative compliance. Like Etsy don't have an email template? Or don't have anyone in ITS who knows about CAN-SPAM? Or the boss over-ruled them? Or the org didn't care about spam? Or everyone was too afraid to mention it? Or ... You can say "they just left it out", but how? If Etsy was a startup or 3 person business then, OK, it's a reasonable excuse. (Etsy have more than 600 employees according to Google search.) Yes errors happen, this one looks bad for the organisation to me.
- lemonsqueeze 9y agoNow that your email address is public, I think it's fair game.
- somid3 9y agoIt breaks CAN-SPAM because there is no unsubscribe link, on reply "unsubscribe" the system does not remove the user. Email is not transactional, last time I logged into Etsy was years ago. This is just a terrible way to introduce yourself. They clearly were aware of the law because they include their address(es) in the footer. An honest mistake would have been if the footer was missing. But the footer is clearly there.
- khazhou 9y agoTo me this ranks pretty damn low on the list of email offenders. It's Cinco de Mayo, someid3... Have a margarita and relax!
- diiaann 9y agoThough a stretch...announcing the leadership change could fall under: "gives information about a change in terms or features or account balance information regarding a membership, subscription, account, loan or other ongoing commercial relationship" from https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/can... But it also mixes in commercial bits, which makes it less acceptable...
- openmosix 9y agoYou hate spam and you publish your email address in a post that you submit to a high-traffic website?
- jecjec 9y agoHAHA! Response, OP?
- somid3 9y agoIm more interested in whether or not this breaks the law of things rather than who has access to my personal email. It baffles me that they have a footer with addresses but no unsubscribe. This is a slippery slope, what if every company starts doing this.
- jerm84 9y agoMASS FUCKING HYSTERIA!#%
- sebleon 9y agoHa, of course this makes the homepage of HN. It's interesting to see what kind of mistakes create outrage in this community.
- arma26 9y agodoes CAN-SPAM apply to recruiter emails?