your terms of service
You may find a Terms of Service document on a website (we show you an example in Figure 2-2), with a product or as part of the legal documentation you receive as part of a service you’ve signed up for. Most likely, you have paid scant attention to a Terms of Service document or web page because you consider it flotsam and mentally toss it aside.
If you’re running a business, however, a Terms of Service web page or document is essential if you want to protect your product, service, or web content from copyright infringements as well as from legal liabilities.
FIGURE 2-2: A Terms and Conditions page on the Butow Communications Group website.
Seeing what’s needed
All these terms and conditions comprise a contract in which the owner of the product, service, and/or website states the conditions of use for the product or service. For example, this document lists rules that users must follow when interacting with one another on a social media site and specifies what will happen if those rules aren’t followed.
In your terms and conditions, you need to ensure that you have liability clauses and disclaimers, such as the fact that a website will likely go down from time to time. This is because a vital reason to have a Terms and Conditions document, no matter what you call it, is to cover your backside. If one or more users bring court action against you, your Terms and Conditions document is your first line of defense.
Comparing privacy policies with terms and conditions
Why do you need a privacy policy as well as a Terms and Conditions document? Aren’t they the same thing?
It’s true that a privacy policy and Terms and Conditions are legally binding documents. But that’s where their commonality ends.
Privacy policies are legally required in most countries. They not only protect your users but also declare your compliance with the privacy laws in those countries and, in some cases, states.
Terms and conditions, on the other hand, are designed to protect you and your business. Business owners can set their rules about how their website, service, and/or product is used — within laws set by the country and perhaps the state where you do business.
Banning spam from your company toolset
Speaking of company policies, the growth of the Internet and email brought with them the unwanted email phenomenon of spam — the company practice of sending unwanted email messages to large numbers of people. The practice (in one form or another) dates all the way back to 1978, though the word spam wasn’t used to describe the practice until 1993 (www.socketlabs.com/blog/know-history-spam).
The practice became so widespread and raised so many alarms by the early 2000s that the United States Congress passed the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act in 2003. The act is better known by its acronym: CAN-SPAM. The CAN-SPAM Act established the first national standards for sending commercial email.
If your company is already sending out email messages as part of its marketing strategy — or is planning to — you need to be aware of the seven guidelines underlying the CAN-SPAM Act. That's because, when it comes to taking a closer look at the “ingredients” of the CAN-SPAM Act, seven is the lucky number. Here’s a breakdown of what this law means — in seven easy bullet points — for your company’s email marketing strategy:
Don’t use a misleading header for your email messages. That is, make sure the intended recipient is the one who is receiving the message and that the person in the From box in the message is the person from your company.
Make sure the subject line matches the message content. The subject line should always give the reader a good idea of what’s in the message.
Address what the message is about up front. That is, if your message is an ad, tell them it’s an ad. Don’t be misleading. Your recipients may reward your honesty.
Include your company’s current physical postal address and your phone number. Your recipients want to know that you’re an actual business. (This is also required by law in Canada, and we’ll talk about Canadian requirements later in this chapter.)
Give your recipients the option to unsubscribe from future emails. And make sure that the opt-out language is clear and easily found because, if people can’t find it, your company or the authorities may start to field complaints that will distract you and your team.
Be sure to unsubscribe people. The CAN-SPAM Act requires that you must process unsubscribe requests for at least 30 days after you send the email, and every unsubscribe request must be processed within 10 business days.
Don’t charge a fee or ask for any additional personal information to have them unsubscribe. If your company uses an automated email marketing service such as Mailchimp, you can set up Mailchimp to have people fill out a short survey about why they’re leaving.
