CAN SPAM Act Compliance in Candidate Relationship Management

May 1, 2017

 

iCIMS Staff

3 min read

Recruitment marketing has become a core competency of talent acquisition. To keep up with today’s consumer-minded job seekers, modern recruiting professionals are adopting recruitment marketing techniques and tools to connect with candidates.

According to a recent iCIMS study, 52% of survey respondents would be open to a new career opportunity, even if they weren’t actively seeking a new job.

You can make it simple for passive candidates to opt-in to automated email campaigns with candidate relationship management (CRM) software. Sending automated personalized, branded communications based on what talent pool they belong to makes passive candidates more likely to think of your organization when they are ready to apply to a job. This involves sharing career opportunities, networking events, and company information in recruitment newsletters.

But there are rules and regulations you should be aware of before partnering with a software company for your recruitment email marketing needs.

What is the CAN SPAM Act?

According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the CAN-SPAM Act establishes requirements for commercial messages, gives recipients the right to have you stop emailing them, and spells out tough penalties for violations.

These requirements do not just apply to bulk emails that end up in your spam folder, this applies to all commercial messages from businesses.

Non-compliance can be costly

Recruiters need to stay compliant with CAN-SPAM laws to ensure their emails aren’t turning off future applicants and avoid costly penalties. Each separate email in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act can cost up to $40,654 in fines.

While emails relating to talent acquisition generally do not fall under the CAN-SPAM guidelines,  iCIMS Candidate Relationship Management can be used to meet the seven guiding principles of the act.

According to the FTC website here are some of the main requirements you should be aware of:

1.     Identify the person or business who initiated the message

2.     Use accurate headlines and sublines that are not misleading

3.     Identify the message as an ad

4.     Include your valid physical postal address within your emails

5.     Tell recipients how to opt-out of recruiting future emails from you

6.     Honor opt-out requests from recipients within 10 business days

7.     Monitor email marketing that others are doing on your behalf

How You Can Reduce Risk

Talent acquisition professionals should partner with a software solution that gives users peace of mind so they can focus on bringing in the best talent for their organization.

iCIMS CRM offers tools that help users include opt-out options, honor opt-outs, and track all emails for monitoring. The system can be used to provide clear information, avoid deceptive subjects, and include information about company location. Any advertisements a customer choose to send to candidates through the system can be labeled and marked as ads.

To learn more about why and how to use CRM technology, check out our eBook “Recruitment Marketing: Fad or Future?”.

Reviewed for accuracy on March 10, 2021, by Alex Oliver.