Anti-Spam Policy
At Astonish Email, we are aware of our responsibilities as a good Internet citizen and are dedicated to protecting the privacy rights of other Internet citizens. We vigorously oppose the sending of unsolicited e-mail (spam).
Astonish Email does not allow anyone to use our services for the purpose of sending spam. We refuse business from known spammers. If a current Astonish Email customer uses our services to spam anyone, that customer's service contract will be voided without refund.
We require that each e-mail message sent out from Astonish Email includes an easy way for subscribers to remove themselves via an unsubscribe link. If a recipient calls our offices and requests to be manually removed from a customer's list, we will manually unsubscribe the recipient from the customer's account.
There are three ways by which a customer may violate this Anti-Spam policy:
- By sending spam.
- By not responding properly to an inquiry from a Astonish Email staff member about the source of a particular e-mail list or e-mail address.
- By not including the required elements on every mass e-mail sent through the service.
Astonish Email may determine at its sole discretion whether a customer is spamming. There are a number of factors Astonish Email uses to determine whether a customer is spamming, including, but not limited to: complaints sent to abuse report addresses, SpamCop reports, complaints sent to any of Astonish Email's upstream providers, and evaluating a customer's mass e-mail statistics and recipient addresses. Decisions made by Astonish Email personnel regarding a customer's use of Astonish Email are final.
Acceptable Use
Regrettably, we cannot accept business from any company with emailing practices that would create a negative delivery reputation for Astonish Email. We also cannot accept companies in industries known for receiving a high volume of SPAM complaints. This includes, but is not limited to the following industries:
- Payday Loans
- MLM Marketing
- Make Money From Home Offers
More about Spam
Definition of Spam
Spam is unsolicited email sent in bulk. Any promotion, information or solicitation that is sent to a person via e-mail without their prior consent, where there is no pre-existing relationship between the sender and the recipient, is spam.
Examples of Spam
- Any e-mail message that is sent to a recipient who had previously signed up to receive newsletters, product information or any other type of bulk email but later opted-out by indicating to the sender that they did not want to receive additional email, then that email is spam.
- Any e-mail message that is sent to recipients that have had no prior association with the organization or did not agree to be e-mailed by the organization is spam.
- Any e-mail message that is sent to a recipient without a way for a person to opt-out or request that future mailings not be sent to them, is spam.
- Any email message that does not have a valid email address in the From Line is spam.
- Any email message that contains any false or misleading information in the header, subject line or message itself is spam.
- Any email that says you can earn $/£1000s each week from home is spam.
- Any email message that promotes an adult web site is spam, unless the recipient has specifically requested information from that web site.
- Any message that is sent to e-mail addresses that have been harvested from web sites, newsgroups, or other areas of the Internet is spam.
- Any message that is sent to e-mail addresses that have been gathered via "e-mail appending", also known as, e-pending, is spam. E-pending is the practice of merging a database of customer information that lacks e-mail addresses for the customers with a third party's database of e-mail addresses in an attempt to match the e-mail addresses with the information in the initial database.
What is not Spam
- An e-mail message is NOT spam if the recipient in anyway requested email be sent to them from the sender or the sender's organization.
- Anytime an organization sends a mass e-mail message to one of its customers, it is NOT spam provided that the organization offers a way for the customer to opt-out of future mailings and that the customer did not previously opt-out.
- An e-mail message is NOT spam when sent to recipients who agreed to receive information or promotions from a partner organization (as long as there is a clear opt-out option).
Any customer that sends spam is in violation of this Anti-Spam policy.
The Complaint Response Process
How we deal with complaints
Even though a customer may not be sending spam, complaints may still be received by Astonish Email from a customer's recipients. It is Astonish Email's policy to respond individually to every complaint, so that the complainant knows his/her address was not harvested, sold, rented, or otherwise improperly added to a customer's lists. The Astonish Email Abuse staff takes the following steps anytime a complaint is received:
- Contact the E-Mail Manager for the customer's account with a Astonish Email Abuse Inquiry. This inquiry will ask the customer to confirm the list source, in general, and also to provide all specific information available regarding the particular e-mail address in question. Customers should respond within two business days of receiving an Abuse Inquiry from Astonish Email. Failure to respond to the Abuse Inquiry is in itself a violation of this policy. Failure to provide all requested information about the e-mail address in question is a violation of this policy. The customer may not respond directly to the complainant without prior approval from the Astonish Email Abuse staff.
- The Astonish Email team reviews the customer's response and the entire complaint and determines whether or not the customer is in compliance with this policy.
- Astonish Email will respond to the complainant. As long as the customer has been adhering to this policy, Astonish Email will simply respond to the complainant letting him know how he opted in to receive e-mailings and reassure him that his e-mail address has been unsubscribed from future mailings. We carbon copy the customer on our response to the complainant.
- Should the customer be found to be in violation of this policy, the customer will receive a spam determination response from our Abuse team with specific information related to the violation.
Why do we respond individually to every complaint?
We need to make sure that we serve our customers in the best way possible. Proper response to spam complaints is essential to ensuring our reputation with e-mail providers all over the world. If Astonish Email is used to send out spam or if we do not respond to spam complaints to inform the complainants that they did indeed sign up for our customer's e-mailings, then we risk tainting our relationship with ISPs around the world and having our servers blocked by them.
We are here to help our customers maximize the effectiveness of their e-mailings, educate them as to the best e-mail practices, and help them to avoid spam complaints.
Required Elements on Every Mass E-mail
Every mass e-mail sent through Astonish Email must contain:
- View in your browser link
- An unsubscribe mechanism, such as an unsubscribe link (for HTML messages) or instructions to reply back with "unsubscribe" in the Subject line (for plain text messages)
- The sender's postal address
To pose questions about this Anti-Spam Policy, or to report spamming activity by one of our customers, please contact our abuse department at:
Astonish Email Limited
The Astonish Suite, 25 Orion House, Andover, Hampshire, SP10 3FG
Tel: 0844 443 6979
Free plan. No card details required!