Overview
Robly and its partners only support permission based and lawful email/mobile marketing practices that comply with CASL, CAN-SPAM and TCPA.
Closed-Loop Authentication List Building
Robly products allow users to place an opt in form on their website. This form collects and stores email addresses of permission-based recipients. All Robly products have an option to use closed-loop authentication: an email address is not added to the recipient list until a link is clicked in the confirmation email or clicks a captcha. This process is implemented completely by the software.
Contact List Abuse Prevention
Our contact list hygiene system uses sophisticated algorithms to assess the probability that a list does not use closed-loop authentication. Any list that fails in the hygiene system is reviewed by Robly.
Robly technology automatically screens email campaigns for indicators of potential problems such as blacklisting and high spam scores. Any email campaign that surpasses a threshold is held until the our compliance team reviews and clears it.
To protect Robly’s reputation, and that of its clients, Robly offers to help new customers upload their first large email distribution list. With the customer’s permission, This allows Robly to view the contents of an email campaign and distribution list. In addition, Robly helps first time customers run a sample email campaign to a few select recipients from their list before sending to the rest.
Software Control Tools
Robly provides its customers with certain tools to assist in compliance with the United States of America’s CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 and Canada’s Anti-Spam Law. For example, Robly products independently add an unsubscribe option to each email sent. Unsubscribes can be requested via a link in each email that goes to a landing page where user can unsubscribe from all or some lists.
This option cannot be removed by the customer. Anyone who unsubscribes will be automatically flagged in the database and their email address will be suppressed from all future mailings. Unsubscribe status can’t be overwritten by list merging or updates. To further protect recipients from email abuse, contacts receiving email sent using Robly will only see their own names in the ‘To’ field. No other recipients’ email addresses are visible.
Email Sending Practices
Robly honors ISP policies (restrictions on number of connections, speed of sending servers, open relay off, reverse DNS enabled, RFC compliance). Authentication standards, such as sender policy framework (SPF) and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM), are used for outgoing email campaigns. Robly products distinguish between soft and hard bounces. Hard bounces are immediately flagged and suppressed from future mailings.
Suppression File Encryption
Robly supports suppression file encryption according to the guidelines at www.espcoalition.org/sites/default/files/resources/suppression_file_encryption_requirement_member.pdf
Spam Complaints
As customers use Robly systems, the number of complaints they receive is tracked by an internal reputation system. Customers with high number of complaints may be subject to list upload or use restrictions. Larger lists are uploaded not by the customer, but by Robly upon the customer’s instruction, and may be subject to manual scrutiny.
When a complaint is received the following process is followed:
User address from complaints received via ISP FBLs are automatically unsubscribed. Complaints received directly from end users or via third party sources like SpamCop are reviewed by our Compliance team. The user address is unsubscribed and we track such reports. We may ask our customers to provide proof of consent in such cases. We may also ask our customers to reconfirm, clean, or sunset their lists, as needed.
Robly reserves the right to assess a fee against clients of up to, the greater of $1,000 and 10% of their monthly fees, for each campaign delivered by the client reasonably deemed unacceptably spam heavy by Robly including, without limitation, due to complaints arising from Spamhaus, SURBL listings, mailbox providers or similar organizations, services or lists. These fees, which represent liquidated damages and not a penalty or fine, will be chargeable upon each incident of spam complaint or reasonable apprehension of spam heavy content. In addition to the above, and without prejudice to Robly’s entitlement to fees owing under a subscription agreement, Robly may, at its sole discretion, terminate the customer accounts of repeat, or otherwise egregious, offenders hereunder.
End users should only receive emails from our system sent on behalf of our customers that they recognize they opted in to. We do not allow any customer to use our platform to send unsolicited email.
If you have received an unsolicited email from one of Robly’s customers, please contact abuse@robly.com
Acceptable Guidelines for Customers
Below are some guidelines around list collection, identification, unsubscribe and content requirements that need to be followed by all Robly customers.
Consent
Robly requires its customers ensure they have proper opt-in permission (express or implied) for each recipient in their list. Customers are also required to produce proof of opt-in or prior relationship upon request. Customers are encouraged to ensure they are emailing end users only for the purposes for which their consent has been collected. For example: If abc@domain.com has consented to receive a one-time product update from Brand A, their email address should not be used to send Brand A’s general periodic email newsletter.
Express Consent
Recipients must express their choice to receive one or more type of emails. Note that consent must be collected using opt-in mechanism and not opt-out mechanism. The recipient must take positive action to indicate their consent. Note that express consent may be collected both orally or in writing.
Co-registration on a partner’s website may be acceptable so long as there are separate opt-in options for each list and recipient is presented with options and choices in a clear and conspicuous manner. For example: Recipient choice to consent to one email list should not be construed as consent to receive email from multiple partner lists.
Below are some common sources of collecting express consent:
- Online web form
- Offline form, paper ballot
- Call center
Implied consent
Recipients must have had a prior business or non-business relationship, in most cases within last two years. Other forms of implied consent include:
- Conspicuous publication of email address – Unless the publication is accompanied by a statement that the person does not wish to receive unsolicited commercial electronic messages, and the message is relevant to the person’s business or official capacity.
- Recipient has provided email address without indicating a wish to receive unsolicited emails and the emails are relevant to the person’s business or official capacity.
The following methods of acquiring email addresses may not provide adequate consent (including but not limited to):
- Email addresses obtained from a third party: Addresses that have been purchased, borrowed, or rented from other parties may not have provided clear consent to receive email from the list buyer
- Address harvesting, Dictionary attacks: These are ways of fraudulently collecting email addresses using various software tools like bots, scrapers, etc, or by attempting to guess email addresses using common usernames at a particular domain.
- Correcting typos – Creating new email addresses by correcting common typos in either localpart or domainpart of email addresses.
- Role-based email addresses – like sales@domain.com and abuse@domain.com are typically risky in terms of proving consent because users of such addresses change frequently.
- Distribution lists – Since these type of addresses forward email to multiple persons, it is usually very onerous to collect consent from all recipients.
- Addresses collected using opt in pages that may be deceptive/ misleading, this includes but is not limited to: misleading users about the products/ services advertised.
Unsubscribe
Every email sent using the Robly platform must include a clear, conspicuous unsubscribe mechanism that is simple and easy to use. Robly automatically includes such functionality in the footer of every email sent.
However, if customers wish to add additional unsubscribe links in the content, Robly provides the option of using “merge tags” to add an unsubscribe link in outgoing emails. Such unsubscribe requests are captured by Robly software and relevant user addresses are automatically removed from the applicable mailing lists. Customers are responsible for choosing a “merge tag” that is optimized for their campaign type and recipient selection method. Customers are also responsible for ensuring merge tags are coded correctly within their email content.
In case customers use some other unsubscribe link, a plan should be in place to make sure users opting out using such means are marked as unsubscribed in Robly.
We understand that this may not be entirely feasible, so we discourage customers from using non-Robly unsubscribe links. Using unsubscribe links belonging to third party advertisers is very risky because the user never opted in to the advertiser and it is challenging to make sure all such users are properly unsubscribed in Robly.
Robly also advises customers to ensure single opt in does not have multiple opt outs. Example: If end user is subscribing to List A, then sender should not auto subscribe user address to List B, List C and List D. in case sender does that, they should ensure that unsubscribe action in any email actually opts user out of all applicable lists (A,B,C,D).
Identification
Robly requires its customers to accurately identify themselves in emails sent out of their account:
- From names: These need to accurately identify the sender of the message
- Subject lines: These need to accurately reflect the purpose of the email
- Identification requirements: The sender of the message needs to be clearly identified in the message. In case the message is being sent on someone’s behalf (advertiser), both the parties need to be clearly identified in the message
- Contact information – Mailing address and either of the following contact information pertaining to sender needs to be mentioned in the message: telephone number, email address, web address. Robly requires this information in the footer of every sent email
- Statement- In case the message is being sent on behalf of someone else (advertiser), a statement indicating which person is sending the message and which person on whose behalf the message is being sent needs to be mentioned in the message
Content
We prohibit customers from sending certain type of content:
- Emails offering illegal goods or services
- Emails that have false or misleading representation in the email, including subject lines
- Emails containing URLs that link to pages that spoof known brands and ask users to download suspicious content
- Work from home, internet “get rich” schemes, lead generation opportunities
- Network marketing, pyramid schemes, and multi-level marketing
- Bitcoin/cryptocurrency related content
- Gambling products
- List brokers or list rental services
- Credit repair or get-out-of-debt content
- Mortgages and/or loans
With regards to the From: domains, we require customers to ensure they maintain proper DNS entries: A (IP address), TXT (for SPF authentication records). Customers also need to ensure they have proper MX records for the Reply-to domain. It is also prohibited to use any form of Private WHOIS registration.
ISPs assign a portion of sending reputation to From: domains and we discourage customers from rotating these domains frequently because ISPs regard this as an attempt to circumvent filtering. This includes rotating both the domain and the sub domain. Example: Similar mail should not be sent from many domains like ab.domain.com, bc.domain.com, de.domain.com, fg.domain.com, hi.domain.com, jk.domain.com. Instead all this mail should be set from domain.com.
In case of any questions or concerns, please feel free to email support[at]robly.com