Good one from the ESPC. If your company allows affiliates, marketing partners, or independent contractors to send out emails on your behalf, be sure to read this article about how CAN-SPAM affects you:

“In fact, Ken Dreifach, the former chief of the Internet Bureau for New York AG’s office, was quoted on the record as stating that “even advertisers with layers of affiliate networks, sub-affiliate networks and independent contractors can still be found liable if any link in the chain is found to have acted illegally.”

http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/10013.asp

The article includes some due diligence tips to monitor your affiliates’ practices, like:

• Standardize email templates for CAN-SPAM compliance
• “Seed” your email lists to make sure that emails sent out are CAN-SPAM compliant
• Use brand-monitoring services

We’ve got some tips of our own, if you’re going to allow affiliates to do your marketing for you:

• Don’t do it
• If you really have to do it, don’t use anybody that uses the word, “blast.” As in, “yeah, we can blast that out for ya.” That’s always a bad sign that they’re not very interested in the permission aspect of email.