What is the applicable legislation on address files?

As a reminder, as our services are located in France, we ask you to comply with French legislation or that of your country if it is more restrictive.

The legislation is not the same for individuals and legal entities.

 

Rule n°1 - For individuals: opt-in

In B To C (communication to individuals), your address file must not contain any recipients who have not requested your e-mailing.

In other words, you should only use addresses of people who have expressed their prior consent to receive direct marketing by email from you. This is called opt-in: with opt-in, the user's consent is explicit: he ticks a box, or scrolls through a drop-down menu so that his personal data can be used for commercial purposes.

You can create your own opt-in file, by using a registration form on your website for example, or a checkbox on your online shop.... Remember to keep a maximum of information such as the date and time of registration, the IP address of the Internet user who registered, as well as the web address of the registration form. This may be necessary to prove the opt-in nature of your file, if necessary, and thus make a possible spam complaint from one of your recipients ineligible.

You are of course required to add an unsubscribe link in your messages so that your subscribers can unsubscribe at any time.

 

BE CAREFUL WITH SCAMS!

When you rent or buy an opt-in address file, make sure that the company that sells you the file is legal and has a registered office. Find out more from the authorities or simply online by searching on Google. An impressive number of stolen or illegal files are sold online by suspicious companies (among other things, avoid files that are described as "hard discount" or "low cost"...). Generally speaking, if you are offered a file of private individuals called "Opt-in" with several hundred or even million addresses for a few tens or hundreds of euros, you should skip over it. A file actually created under the opt-in regime is much more expensive, especially for the purchase! Indeed, count about 0.20 € per address for a serious file. Finally, please note that no one accepts to receive all the emails from the Earth, in other words the "generalist" opt-in files do not exist, it must always be mentioned the center(s) of interest (s) expressed by the subscribers.

Beware also of foreign companies that sell opt-in or even double opt-in files, "completely legal and declared"... These companies are subject to the laws of their country of origin and add in their conditions that it is your responsibility to ensure that you comply with the legislation of your country.

 

In any case, especially for an opt-in file, make sure it is legal by contacting the authorities or our technical support. You are solely responsible for the file you use, if we receive justified complaints following a sending made on an illegal file you risk the suspension of the sending service and your OxiMailing license (in addition to the legal fines in case of complaint from the recipient to the authorities!).

 

Rule n°2 - For companies: the opt-out

This collecting method is applicable to professionals (B To B). Unlike individuals, the box "I agree to receive commercial emails from..." can be checked by default in the registration form. A default unchecked box like "I refuse to receive commercial emails..." can also do the trick.

In other words, you are allowed to prospect a professional who has not previously refused to receive emails from you, but only if he or she has been able to do so. Each email sent must then offer the possibility to unsubscribe from the file. Hence the mandatory presence of an unsubscribe link.

Only generic addresses of professionals such as info@, sales@, contact@... are not subject to either opt-in or opt-out. 

An important restriction: the products and services presented in your message must be related to the activity of the targeted companies. In other words, don't target florists if you sell construction helmets! 
Finally, the file must have been created in a legal manner: above all, no aspiration or copying of the data from the Yellow Pages, for example!

 

Finally, we can never repeat it enough, know that the use of address extractors is strictly prohibited. Read this article to learn more about it.

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