Affiliate marketing can be one of the best ways to expand your brand’s reach and drive revenue, but it also comes with potential risks, and if you are working with affiliates in the email channel, compliance is a key challenge to address. If affiliates send emails that don’t adhere to legal regulations and your brand’s guidelines, it can lead to significant consequences for your company. Whether from a damaged reputation or hefty fines and legal repercussions. That’s why properly setting up and actively monitoring affiliate email compliance is the key to protecting your brand.

Below are some key compliance considerations and best practices for ensuring that your affiliate partners follow the rules.

Understanding Affiliate Email Compliance

Affiliate email compliance refers to the legal standards that email marketers must follow when sending campaigns. Compliance is vital for legal reasons, but also helps improve deliverability, supports consumer trust, and leads to longer-term campaign success.

Key Regulations

In the US, the CAN-SPAM Act is the primary federal law that sets the guidelines for email marketing. Among other requirements, the following rules for email marketers are defined:

• Don’t use false or misleading header information
• Don’t use deceptive subject lines
• Identify the message as an ad
• Tell recipients where you’re located
• Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future marketing emails
• Honor opt out requests promptly (within 10 business days)
• Monitor what others are doing on your behalf

That last bullet point explains why you must always ensure that your affiliate email partners are compliant. You are legally responsible for the email marketing sent by affiliates on your behalf. 

Affiliate marketers must also ensure they do not engage outside the guidelines that a brand has set for them. That includes practices that may be considered spammy or misleading that could trigger compliance issues for the brands they promote. Since this article focuses on U.S. laws, brands operating in other regions should also be aware of regulations like GDPR (Europe) and CASL (Canada), which have additional requirements for consent and data protection.

Best Practices for Monitoring Affiliate Email Compliance

To maintain compliance and safeguard your brand, proactive monitoring and enforcement strategies are going to be what keeps your programs compliant. Here are some key steps to take:

1. Vet Affiliates Thoroughly

Before a new affiliate enters your program, you should have a vetting process in place to focus on affiliates who meet your requirements. Not all affiliates deliver the same quality traffic or leads. So, make sure you vet potential partners before allowing them to promote your brand via email marketing. 

This vetting process can include steps like:

• Have applicants provide basic contact information (First name, Last name, Email address, website, social media)
• Review and deny questionable email addresses (jdushdiken@example.com, 38483jdhfu@example.com)
• Look for applicants with a history of responsible marketing practices
• Ask how they build their email lists
• Ask them for an example of an email they’ve sent for another brand

Create an application and review process that meets your company’s needs. Then, regularly review affiliate performance once they are onboard to ensure they continue providing the level of quality you expect.

2. Set Clear Affiliate Email Brand Guidelines

Before affiliates start promoting your brand via email, provide them with detailed guidelines outlining:

• Approved email templates, subject lines, and other content requirements
• A summary of CAN-SPAM guidelines, such as this FTC resource
• Any other particular brand guidelines you may have around all marketing material

When affiliates know exactly what’s expected of them, it reduces the risk of compliance violations.

3. Use Compliance Monitoring Tools

Once affiliates are actively mailing your offers, it’s important to have regular compliance monitoring in place on those campaigns. Fortunately, various compliance monitoring tools can help automate the process by:

• Detecting unauthorized or misleading email content
• Monitoring email headers, subject lines, and sender domains
• Flagging potential violations in real time

These tools provide visibility into how your brand is being represented and help catch issues before they become serious problems. Additionally, conducting regular audits proactively helps identify compliance gaps before they escalate. Even with guidelines and monitoring tools in place, regular audits are necessary to ensure ongoing compliance.

4. Provide Ongoing Affiliate Guidance and Training

Compliance isn’t a one-and-done effort, it often requires continuous education, especially with constantly evolving regulations. Consider regularly providing affiliates with training and resources on:

• Updated compliance regulations
• Common questions and FAQs
• Best practices for ethical email marketing
• Real-world examples of what to avoid

Providing ongoing resources not only helps keep affiliates informed, helps prevent mistakes, and reinforces a culture of compliance within your affiliate program, but it can also keep affiliates engaged with your program. Giving affiliates confidence, and the occasional reminder, that your affiliate email program is a priority and constantly monitored.

5. Enforce Compliance Measures

Even if you’ve done everything you can to set your affiliates up for success, you’re still going to have to enforce your guidelines from time to time. Creating a clear set of affiliate guidelines is necessary, but even clear rules won’t necessarily have an impact without enforcement.

Establish a process for dealing with compliance issues or failure to adhere to band guidelines. Those can range from warnings all the way to more serious consequences on continued access to your affiliate program.  Create a process that holds partners and affiliates accountable and rewards compliance. This demonstrates that compliance is a priority for you and also protects your brand from potential risks.

Let’s wrap things up…

Affiliate email marketing can be a highly effective strategy, but only if compliance is a core part of your program. By setting clear guidelines, using monitoring tools, conducting audits, and educating your affiliates, you create a strong foundation for brand protection.

A proactive compliance strategy not only safeguards your brand but also strengthens relationships with reputable affiliates. When compliance is a shared responsibility, both brands and affiliates benefit from a sustainable and successful email marketing program.

This guest post was written by Antonio Jones from our partners at OPTIZMO Technologies.

OPTIZMO Technologies is the recognized thought-leader in the email and online marketing space for email suppression list management, email campaign management, data management, and risk mitigation services relative to email compliance.