Hey all, got a potential legal query about collecting email addresses. My client has been adding additional emails to his list by watching sessions on HotJar where users input their email into the form but somehow forget to hit the subscribe button or just exit the page. Basically the equivalent of a cart abandonment. I told him that might not be completely legal as they haven’t hit the subscribe button and technically haven’t said we can email them. He said they’ve still accepted our privacy policy when they land on the site so all their data is free to use for marketing purposes. I said I’d check this email issue just to be sure.

Ooph. I’m not sure the main issue here is legal - I just think this is unlikely to be a high quality set of potential contacts.

Hi! Just seems to happen I am a Data Protection expert lol - I just joined.

Several things (I’m an ESP, so this is something we spend a lot of time thinking about): • The low quality of leads is definitely an issue, but that’s the least of your legal problems • This is a clear violation of CAN-SPAM. They did not consent to marketing emails (which is separate from a privacy policy), and this is required for sending ANY promotional emails at all • Abandoned cart emails fall under “prior business relationship” and thus, get transactional status for one email only. (Courts agree on this, beyond that it’s promotional) What you’re doing here has no prior business relationship and is just plain unethical and illegal depending on the country you live in. This is not a practice I would endorse or recommend to anyone trying to build a serious list. If this is your best effort to get customers, you’ve got some more work to do. 😎

and by no means you can assume that a user accepts their data to be used for marketing purposes just because they landed on the site

Just curious to know is this cart abandoned related to shopify?

no not related to shopify

@Dave Rodenbaugh I was with a Fortune 50 when Can Spam came out, and followed it for a year or two but I never hard of any enforcement. I've been out of email for years. Has there been any enforcement?