Overview
Email deliverability is greatly influenced by how senders obtain and respect recipient opt-in and opt-out.
Twilio SendGrid customers must uphold the Twilio SendGrid Email Policy to prevent and eliminate unwanted emails. Twilio strives to work with its customers so that emails are sent to recipients that wish to receive those emails, and those emails comply with applicable laws, regulations, and industry standards or guidance.
Notice: If you are an Independent Software Vendor (ISV) - a Twilio SendGrid customer who uses Twilio SendGrid services in the delivery of your services to your own clients (see End Users as defined in our Terms of Service) - that means your responsibility to adhere to our policies extends to the activity of your customers. You and your End-Users must comply with the Twilio SendGrid Email Policy and all applicable laws, regulations, and industry standards or guidance in connection with your use, or your End Users use of Twilio SendGrid Email.
What You Need To Know
Opt-in Requirements
Except for transactional email, affirmative consent is required for all email sent using Twilio SendGrid. Transactional email is non-marketing email which contains information about an action or transaction a recipient has taken or agreed to and, if applicable, updates or notifications to that recipient about that action or transaction.
This means that any account sending emails that were not initiated by a consumer’s action must have explicit consent to send to their recipients.
Opt-in requirements include:
- Consent cannot be blanket consent or gathered from a third party. If you are sending email, you need to be the one who got the consent. Not from a purchased list, a third party lead generator, or an affiliate.
- Before receiving emails, the recipient must be presented with the choice to provide or withhold consent.
- The sender must provide Sender Identification when gathering consent, and maintain Sender Identification throughout communication.
- The sender must inform the recipient how their email address will be used and the subject matter of the emails they will receive.
- The sender must make the recipient aware of how to withdraw, at any time, their affirmative consent. Senders must obtain affirmative consent from a recipient again if they send that recipient an email after an extended period of non-engagement.
Opt-in Violation Examples
Neglecting to collect affirmative consent from your recipients will significantly impact your email deliverability, and will jeopardize your Twilio SendGrid account status.
Some examples of opt-in violations include:
- Sending emails to email addresses that you obtained from the Internet or social media or to generic email aliases (e.g., webmaster@domain.com or info@domain.com) without obtaining prior affirmative consent. Scraping emails from social media, LinkedIn, affiliate companies, etc is not acceptable.
- Sending unsolicited or unwanted emails in bulk.
- Failing to provide Sender Identification when gathering consent.
- Failing to maintain Sender Identification throughout communication.
Opt-out Requirements
Opt-out must also be respected when sending email. The recipient of any non-transactional email must be able to freely unsubscribe from further communications.
Opt-out requirements include:
- All non-transactional email you send must include the following in the body of each message:
- An accurate physical mailing address in the body of the email where unsubscribe requests can be physically mailed
- A clear and conspicuous hyperlink for unsubscribing
- A hyperlink to your organization’s privacy policy that is applicable to any messages you send
- Recipients must be able to revoke their consent to receiving your messages at any time.
- Opt out requests must be honored within the timeframe required by any applicable laws, or 10 days - whichever interval is shortest.
- Individuals must opt-in again before you can send additional email messages to them.
Why does this matter?
Failing to collect affirmative consent from your recipients or respect recipient opt-out will significantly impact your email deliverability, and will jeopardize your Twilio SendGrid account status.
Sending emails which exhibit deliverability issues or negatively affect the performance of the Twilio SendGrid Email Services or Twilio’s business reputation may constitute a violation of the Twilio SendGrid Email Policy, as determined by Twilio, on a case-by-case basis.
These include, but are not limited to, sending emails that result in (a) complaints from third parties (e.g., complaints from inbox providers or law enforcement agencies) or an unreasonable number of complaints from recipients (e.g., complaints of spam or similar complaints) or (b) excessive block listings or listings that exceed a reasonable period of time to resolve.
Twilio will review potential violations of the Twilio SendGrid Email Policy, and may enforce accounts found to be in violation.