At LloydLaw we get a fair amount of direct marketing by email. This is invariably unsolicited and it is often distinguishable from random spam. This is the sort of email sent by a legitimate business in the UK that wants to do business with us in some form or another. From time to time, we politely ask to be removed from the mailing list, but there are always one or two businesses that think we are being grumpy and unreasonable.
The law on email marketing changed at the end of 2003 when the Privacy & Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 came into effect. These Regulations made it unlawful to send marketing emails - subject to one important exception - without having first obtained opt-in consent from the intended recipient.
In particular, Regulation 22 (2) provides that unless you have got the express consent of the recipient, no business can send unsolicited email.
The important exception (which appears at Regulation 23 (3)) is that you can send unsolicited email if - as the sender - you obtained the email address in the course of "sale or negotiations for the sale of a product or service" and you use the email to market "similar products or services". The sender should also ensure that an "unsubcribe" or opt out facility is included in every email sent. In other words, if we as a law firm, obtained someone's email address because they had asked us some general advice, but they had never actually become a client of the firm, we would be entitled to send them email about our legal services, provided we told them they could opt out. We couldn't send them emails about anything else.
All businesses, including lawyers, need to be aware that sending email updates to clients and prospective clients constitutes direct marketing and is subject to these restrictions. Our practice is to always make sure that clients agree at the outset of the relationship that they are happy to receive marketing emails.
Comments