by Wikus Engelbrecht
29. March 2011 00:03
South African businesses across the board are getting the sharp end of the stick with the arrival of the new Consumer Protection Act on the 1st of April 2011. The new act, which will set out to protect vulnerable consumers in an uncompromising manner, is said to place a greater emphasis on honest and fair dealing and promote economic welfare. At first glance these changes in the body of legislation, as applicable to direct email marketing, do seem stifling and even radical - that the powers that be have outlawed targeted bulk emails and bulk sms services.
Fear not. The fact is that revisions have been made to complement and support existing statutes. Or so they say.
But let’s face it, the devil is in the details, and the new right to restrict direct marketing is going to knead the advertising industry into unfamiliar shapes, one way or another. The act etches into stone rules to regulate interaction between businesses and consumers in the marketplace, protecting their privacy and preventing exploitation. Doing away with the everyday harassment of high-powered, unsolicited direct marketing. No more cold calls. No more pesky emails and sms’s battering you with drivel about random special offers, and how you too could be living la vida loca.
These provisions aren’t meant to kill the industry though. While there will need to be a tightening of belts, the act essentially just goes about quelling the dark side of marketing, limiting or removing the most common offensive practices. True, the Minister’s statement regarding the act does read like a fairytale of politically-correct-isms, but there is still a lot to say about how consumer liberties can catalyse direct marketing improvements, some of which are overdue.
So here’s the deal. Basically, from now, on all marketing messages that you send out to your pool of contacts must be solicited. Bulk email marketing opt-in / double opt-in tools such as subscription forms and unsubscribe options will need to be a standard feature on all communications. These are now a must in SA. To operate within the law, email distributers can send out media only to their formal subscribers. And these should also have opt-out options stated clearly at the top of the email. So the need to build lists of genuinely interested individuals will become a prominent, consumer-friendly movement in South Africa. It's time to get cracking on your subscriber forms, which you can build up by; adding these to your facebook, blog or website, having "forward to a friend" functionality on your newsletter or getting your name out via recommendations and reviews.
That’s one half of the story. The other side of the new Consumer Act coin places restrictions on when you are allowed to send out marketing messages. Timing prohibitions provide that suppliers are forced to abstain from engaging in direct marketing during prescribed periods. Unless the client has requested or agreed otherwise, specific dates, calendar holidays and times of day have been marked as periods that are to be kept free of advertising buzz. It will be crucial to have this in mind when you set up trigger mails and schedule your campaign activities.
Gone are the days of junk mail and of being ambushed by marketers at any hour. That is, at least in theory. How all of this is going to be practically enforced and managed is of course anybody’s guess.
In principle, and especially with feel-good phrases such as; “protection against abuse of information”, “consumer empowerment” and near-infinite repetitions of the word “proactive”, the new act should sweep away some of the usual advertising hogwash and lackluster client services. It’s an equal-opportunity act, codifying a general more-effort-for-all policy.
The greater good here is that white-listed direct marketing services, such as GraphicMail, are backed up by the act. Reductions in unwanted spam will give advertisers a larger consumer attention-share, and hypothetically, give ethical businesses a better market-share.
