So, you have a cool new idea to get people on your mailing list. Or maybe it’s a cool new idea to keep people on your mailing list. Anyway, it’s cool, right? And it will mean more money, too!

How strongly do you feel about it? No, really. How strongly?

Are you willing to spend money to prove that your idea is good? Are you willing to pay $3,000,000 plus attorney’s fees? And if you don’t think that your idea is worth $3,000,000 plus attorney’s fees are you sure that you want to be the industry innovator? It’s a good thing to innovate. New ideas are great. But you have to strongly believe that they’re the right thing to do under the current regulatory landscape.

Putting your compliance information into an image file might ensure that people with screen readers and non-HTML compliant email readers stay on your list. But is that really a $3,000,000 idea?

Putting your compliance information into either the text or HTML parts of your email but not both might keep people on your list. But is that really a $3,000,000 idea?

Creating a hash with the subscriber’s email address in it and comparing that to what they put into an unsubscribe form might keep some people on the list. But is that really a $3,000,000 idea?

Sending your mail from an “no-reply” address will keep you from having to do some list management since you won’t read (or process) the unsubscribe requests. But, is that really a $3,000,000 idea?

I’m sure you get the picture. The question that I’m really asking here is: “Are you prepared to fund the lawsuit to prove that your dubious idea isn’t a violation of the law?”

If you are not prepared to fund that lawsuit, then you are way too close to the line. My advice is “don’t do that then”.

Yeah, it’s really simple advice, but it’s also amazingly effective at getting people to stop and think about the potential consequences of their actions.

[UPDATE: The $3,000,000 comes from penalties under CAN-SPAM. My quick reading indicates the availability of $2,000,000 in penalties for AG lawsuits and $1,000,000 for ISPs. I could, of course, be wrong about that, but $3,000,000 is still a nice round number for this discussion, don't you think?]