Commercial email compliance program (CAN-SPAM / ePrivacy)

Description

Commercial email compliance is the surface where US, EU, UK, Canadian, Korean, and Japanese rules converge into a single operational program because almost every email program ships across all of them simultaneously. The shape is roughly: a working unsubscribe link honored within 10 business days (CAN-SPAM) or immediately (CASL, GDPR ePrivacy, Japan SCT, Korea), accurate header and sender identity, a valid physical postal address, non-deceptive subject lines, clear advertising identification on the message, opt-in capture (rather than opt-out) wherever the jurisdiction requires it, no use of harvested addresses, and affiliate-compliance flow-down so that contractors and partners do not exfiltrate the obligation. CASL and the EU ePrivacy regime are the strictest and typically dominate the program design; running a CASL-compliant program tends to satisfy the others as a side effect. The recurring failure mode is suppression-list drift: keeping the cross-product, cross-domain unsubscribe list authoritative across vendor ESP changes is where most enforcement actions originate, because a re-mailing of a previously-suppressed address tends to surface immediately as a complaint. Transactional content classification (which messages are commercial and which are transactional) is the other recurring difficulty; the tests differ by jurisdiction and the line is rarely crisp.

Required by (2 regulations)

• CAN-SPAM

  15 U.S.C. §§ 7701-7713: opt-out, header accuracy, subject-line truthfulness, ad identification, valid physical address, no-harvesting, affiliate liability, transactional-content classification.

  15 U.S.C. §§7701-7713; 16 CFR Part 316

• ASCT

  Specified Commercial Transactions Act + Act on Regulation of Transmission of Specified Electronic Mail: opt-in consent before commercial email + sender disclosure.

  Act on Specified Commercial Transactions (Act No. 57 of 2000, as amended by Act No. 70 of 2021, effective June 1, 2022)

Fulfilled by (7)

• mailchimp · full · low effort · $
  Mailchimp enforces CAN-SPAM unsubscribe + suppression + sender authentication out of the box; covers GDPR ePrivacy opt-in capture via signup forms.
• sendgrid · full · low effort · $$
  Twilio SendGrid enforces CAN-SPAM compliance + provides Suppression Manager API for granular opt-out groups.
• klaviyo · full · low effort · $$
  Klaviyo handles CAN-SPAM + Korea KISA + Japan SCT opt-in capture + suppression.
• customer-io · full · low effort · $$
  Customer.io applies CAN-SPAM + GDPR ePrivacy + CASL guardrails on every send.
• hubspot · full · low effort · $$
  HubSpot Marketing Hub manages opt-in capture, double-opt-in (DE / AT / CH), and suppression with regional toggles.
• iterable · full · low effort · $$$
  Iterable enterprise marketing platform with regional consent + suppression.
• In-house build · high effort
  Custom email infrastructure requires building suppression-list service + opt-in capture + footer-injection + DKIM/SPF + bounce processing.

ClearLaunch does not accept payment from vendors. Methodology.

Evidence formats

• ESP suppression-list export
• opt-out request log + processing-time audit
• list-acquisition provenance records
• affiliate marketing flow-down agreement
• physical postal address footer template per locale