Subscribe-reluctant cultures & enewsletters vs operational

[Jane_Massey]

We've begun an organization-wide enewsletter for Korean speakers based in the U.S. or internationally. To launch, we target any Korean speakers in our DB & send them only 3 issues as a trial over 1.5 months. (The top story is always a countdown of remaining free issues accompanied by an invitation & CTA subscribe now button.) If they don't subscribe, they do not receive issue #4.

The Korean editor insists that their culture is read only, non-joiners & will not fill out forms to subscribe. Someone in the C-Suite asks why we can't push these enewsletters as 2x/month operational emails to our Korean audience. I'm standing ground that's not only bad practice but a violation of our terms with Marketo. 

What says the community? Marketo? Thanks.

[Darshil_Shah1]

This is what Korean anti spam laws dictates:

• Explicit consent is required and must be renewed every 2 years, opt-in approach,

• Implicit consent is accepted up to 6 months after conclusion of sales
• Purchasing lists is possible but consent from recipients needs to be (re)verified.
• Subscribers must be informed about the purpose of collecting their data, and the duration of storing their data.
• The subject line must contain “advertisement” both in Korean and in English.
• Clear identification of the sender and its contact information shall be available in the message.
• An option to cancel subscription must be always available

Source: https://www.google.com/amp/s/chamaileon.io/resources/ultimate-email-spam-law-collection/amp/

Making Marketing Mails as operational and sending them without the consent will be a breach as per the korean anti spam laws.

[Jane_Massey]

A followup as my boss disputes GDPR & CAN-SPAM require an explicit opt-in:

I've always followed the strictest adherence to explicit opt-in or never auto-subscribing people to receive a regularly sent email newsletter.

The pushback I'm getting in this case is that cold emails are allowed in the US & Korea as long as an opt-out is made available. Since these email addresses were collected from event participants for general purposes, he says, they should be automatically subscribed to the newsletter. I contest an implicit opt-in is for an occasional marketing or promotional email, not a twice-monthly sent newsletter.

Am I being dogmatic?

[SanfordWhiteman]

A followup as my boss disputes GDPR & CAN-SPAM require an explicit opt-in:

I'm at a loss — absent legitimate interest, GDPR clearly requires opt-in. I'd be wary of working under these circumstances.

Since these email addresses were collected from event participants for general purposes, he says, they should be automatically subscribed to the newsletter. I contest an implicit opt-in is for an occasional marketing or promotional email, not a twice-monthly sent newsletter.

Am I being dogmatic?

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The only thing I'd say here is that IF implicit opt-in were allowed for email marketing — again, big IF — it's likely too dogmatic to apply it to one-off marketing emails but not to repeating marketing newsletters. That is, either both are allowed or neither. But a lawyer needs to weigh in.

[SanfordWhiteman]

On top what Darshil said, marking these emails as Operational is the most glaring breach IMO, because it means you aren't observing the Unsubscribed field for those people that do fill out a form and wish to be removed.