What are the best practices for referral emails regarding consent and incentives?

Key findings

• Consent spectrum: There's a grey area between clearly consensual transactional emails (like event invitations) and unsolicited marketing emails. The latter typically requires explicit opt-in.
• Risk of abuse: Allowing users to customize referral email content can open doors to spam or malicious use, potentially damaging sender reputation and deliverability. This is why it's important to understand why your emails might be going to spam.
• Incentive structure: Incentivized referral programs, while effective for conversion, necessitate careful consideration to avoid appearing as spam, especially if the incentive is tied to the recipient's action.
• Transparency is key: Recipients should clearly understand who sent the email (on whose behalf) and why they are receiving it. This aligns with legal requirements for email consent and privacy updates.

Key considerations

• Define use cases: Clearly distinguish between legitimate, low-risk transactional referrals (e.g., event invites) and potentially high-risk marketing referrals. Legal considerations for referral campaigns are detailed by Viral Loops in their blog about referral campaign legal considerations.
• Control content: If users can trigger emails, ensure they cannot inject custom, potentially abusive, content or links. This mitigates risks associated with email fraud and protecting your sender reputation.
• Provide unsubscribe options: All referral emails should include a clear and easy way for recipients to opt out of future communications from your platform, regardless of how they were introduced. This aligns with best practices for email unsubscribes.
• Clear sender identity: The email should clearly state that it is sent on behalf of the referring user, ensuring the recipient understands the context and sender. This is crucial for maintaining trust and deliverability.

Key opinions

• Opt-in approach: Many marketers prefer a strict, black-and-white approach where no communication is sent unless there's direct opt-in, minimizing legal and deliverability risks. This includes understanding the relevance of COI/DOI email opt-in.
• Risk assessment: The general sentiment leans towards caution due to the significant risks associated with ambiguous consent, even for seemingly innocuous referral types.
• Incentive volatility: Incentivized referral emails, especially those encouraging invites to a platform, are often seen as highly volatile and best avoided, as they can easily lead to abuse and spam complaints.
• Slippery slope: Even non-incentivized invites for professional services can be viewed as a slippery slope, where initial compliance can quickly lead to situations ripe for abuse if not tightly managed.

Key considerations

• Defining clear use cases: Marketers emphasize the need to strictly define and limit referral email use cases to mitigate abuse potential. This includes considering legally mandated email notifications.
• Limiting user content: Preventing referrers from adding custom messages or links is crucial to prevent scams and malicious content, which could lead to your emails being blocklisted.
• Recipient-focused incentives: Consider structuring incentives for the recipient (e.g., a discount on their first order) rather than solely the referrer, which can improve conversion and recipient acceptance. Transparency about these incentives is vital, as noted by Ambassador on their blog post about customer referral program best practices.

Key opinions

• Sender responsibility: A primary concern is whether the platform is merely facilitating user-initiated emails or actively sending messages to recipients provided by users. This distinction affects legal responsibility and deliverability outcomes.
• Content control: Allowing users to customize email content introduces significant risk, as it can be exploited for spam or malicious purposes, potentially impacting the sending domain's reputation. This is why it's important to understand what happens when your domain is on a blocklist.
• Incentive impact: The presence and nature of incentives (e.g., for the referrer or recipient) directly influence the risk profile of referral programs, particularly concerning spam regulations.
• Low risk, high consequence: While some referral scenarios might appear low-risk in terms of everyday deliverability, a single 'bad' incident can severely impact sender reputation and lead to blacklisting, which contradicts the definition of a best practice.

Key considerations

• Clarify email initiation: Businesses must determine whether their platform is merely a tool for users to send emails themselves (like Gmail) or if the business is the actual sender on behalf of users. This affects compliance and responsibility for email deliverability issues.
• Implement robust abuse prevention: Regardless of the use case, strong measures must be in place to prevent misuse of referral systems, such as injecting malicious links or content into messages. This is particularly relevant when considering spam traps.
• Align with legal frameworks: Ensure referral programs fully comply with anti-spam laws like CASL or GDPR. This often means carefully navigating implied versus explicit consent, which is also a factor when asking how long email consent lasts.

Key findings

• Consent requirement: Most anti-spam laws require explicit consent for commercial electronic messages. Referral emails, especially if incentivized or promotional, may fall under this category, necessitating careful legal review.
• Transactional vs. Commercial: A crucial distinction is made between purely transactional or informational messages (like event invitations) and commercial messages. The former often has different consent requirements than the latter.
• Identification and unsubscribe: All messages, regardless of type, must clearly identify the sender and provide a functional unsubscribe mechanism. This is a universal requirement across major anti-spam legislations.
• Transparency: Even with implied consent (e.g., family/personal relationships), the message must clearly indicate who sent it (the referring party) and on whose behalf, without misleading the recipient.

Key considerations

• Legal compliance check: Thoroughly review relevant anti-spam laws (e.g., CASL for Canada, GDPR for EU, CAN-SPAM for US) to ensure your referral program's emails meet all consent and content requirements. Mailchimp provides an overview of the Canada Anti-Spam Law.
• Content control: Restrict user-generated content in referral emails to prevent the insertion of problematic or non-compliant text, links, or images. This also safeguards against your email address ending up on a blacklist.
• Clear opt-out: Ensure an easy-to-find and functional unsubscribe link is present in every referral email, allowing recipients to opt-out quickly and definitively. This is a core best practice for email engagement and compliance.