Approval Process for Sending Emails

To make sure all of our users are using the Marketing 360® Nurture platform according to email regulations, your account may go through approvals. Approvals are a normal part of sending email through an email service provider, which are meant to help:

• Keep spammers away.
• Confirm users follow the best practices for email content and subscriber acquisition.
• Protect the email sending reputation of all users of our platform.

 

When you need to be approved

Approvals are triggered based on the number of subscribers you're sending to. This can vary based on how long you've been using the platform. Your account may need to be approved more than once, depending on how rapidly your audience grows.

Other situations might trigger an approval, such as abnormally high bounce or spam complaint rates.

Prepare for an approval

The turnaround time for approvals is faster if your account and email content are in good standing. To guarantee a faster approval process, follow the guidelines below.

 

Legal requirements

Make sure to follow all applicable legal requirements (for example, CAN-SPAM) for the countries you are sending emails both to and from.

 

Subscribers

For subscribers, we check the following:

• How you obtained them.
• Whether they opted into your email list voluntarily.
• Whether they can opt out of your email list whenever they want.
• Previous interactions with your emails.

 

How to prepare your subscribers

Make sure that:

1. Your email address collection methods comply with the legal permission guidelines and anti-spam policy.
2. Subscribers can easily opt out through a single click unsubscribe link if they no longer want emails from you.

You'll need to provide us with:

1. Every method used collect email addresses (i.e. from an email signup form on your website, or a list collected at an in-person event).
2. Written or digital proof of permission. For example:
   • The URLs for your website signup forms.
   • Scanned copies of offline signups.
   • Copies of confirmed opt-in by personal email correspondence.

When describing where you got your email addresses from:

• Be descriptive and specific about the actions subscribers took to opt in. Telling us, "They signed up at trade shows and in our store" is good, but you should be more specific. We need to know exactly how or why they signed up at those locations.
• For offline signups, explain in detail how users joined. For example, did they verbally agree to be on your list, or sign a form during an event?
• If your recipients are paying customers, tell us how long ago they were customers, and how often you've emailed them since they purchased from you.

 

Email content

We take email content seriously, since spam complaints against your emails can affect other customers who use our platform.

Follow the content guidelines below to help reduce spam complaints. We will follow up with you after the initial review if we require any content changes.

 

How to prepare your email content

Make sure that:

1. Email content complies with our acceptable use policy.
2. Email content matches your subscribers' expectations for the type of content they signed up for.
3. Emails contain the sender's name and physical address.
4. You include a permission reminder that clearly explains to the recipient how or why they're receiving your emails.
5. You clearly identify yourself or your organization in your emails. The "From" name and email address should accurately identify the person or business sending the email, and your subject line should make clear to subscribers what you're sending to them.

Avoid:

1. Content about third party products or services. A line in the fine print that says, "we'll occasionally email you affiliate content" tells us you're at least trying to be honest - however, many recipients might ignore the fine print and report the email as spam.
2. Unsubscribe links that are hard to find.
3. A complicated unsubscribe process. For example, forcing recipients to enter their email address or check boxes to unsubscribe.
4. Content that resembles spam, such as subject lines including spammy terms like "FREE! WIN! SALE!" or image-heavy emails with very little text content.
5. Irrelevant content, or content that doesn't match your subscriber's expectations. 

 

Start the approval process

You can start the approval process from multiple places on the platform. However, you will only see the option to start the process when you are approaching or have triggered an approval.

Before this happens, it's worth preparing your account and email content to ensure that the approval process will go as quickly as possible.

 

Pre-approval

Pre-approval is the best way to avoid delays in your campaigns sending. When you're approaching an approval, you'll see a message on the Overview and Campaigns dashboards.

To start the pre-approval process, click Request approval, then complete the form to submit your account for approval.

 

Approval from campaign snapshots

When the total number of subscribers you're sending to exceeds what you've been previously approved for, you'll see a prompt to begin the approval process. Click Start the approval process, then complete the form to submit your account for approval.

There are two things to keep in mind if you trigger an approval while trying to send a campaign:

• You won't be able to send that campaign until the approval is complete.
• Your campaign will not automatically send once you are approved. You will need to manually schedule and send it afterward.

 

Frequently asked questions

How long will my approval take?

All approvals enter a queue. It can take up to 12 hours for the submission to be received, although it's usually much quicker. From there, the time it can take to complete an approval can depend on:

• First time approvals for new accounts — These often take longer than subsequent approvals, and can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days to complete.
• Subsequent approvals — Usually completed within a few hours.

If you provide all information required through the approval form, then the approval process will go faster.

 

How will I know I've been approved?

You will be contacted via email when you've been approved.