A link alone in the newsletter is no longer enoughThis is what you have to keep in mind to keep your whitelisting safe
The CSA (Certified Senders Alliance) guarantees its members a secure sending of e-mails and thus ensures that serious e-mails do not end up in the spam folder. However, a high standard is also necessary here in order not to destroy this advantage of the involved senders by black sheep. In order to continue to guarantee whitelisting, the specifications for the senders are regularly adapted to the current conditions. The following change is effective from May 25th 2019.
The most recent innovation requires an imprint when sending commercial mails.
This adjustment was already transferred to the CSA inclusion criteria in 2018, with a one-year transition period. As of May 25th 2019, the client must be recognizable in full text for every mailing sent for commercial purposes.
In the opinion of the CSA, it was previously necessary to provide sufficient imprint information via a link. In practice, however, it has been shown that this does not always work as desired. Due to technical problems the link could not always be opened and the recipient could not see the information in the imprint. This case can give cause for complaints or legal objections. For this reason, the provision in section 2.4 of the admission criteria was supplemented.
2.4 The client, i.e. the contractual partner of the sender of a business e-mail, must be clearly identifiable. Each e-mail sent must contain an easily recognisable imprint, at the latest twelve months after the entry into force of the admission criteria as a full text.
The legal basis for this can be found in § 5 paragraph 1 sentence 1 of the Telemedia Act. It states that service providers for business telemedia must provide the corresponding information directly and permanently.
What does that mean for you?
A link alone in a mailing thus does not meet the requirements. The imprint must therefore be available as a full text.
If you are CSA certified or whitelisted by an email software provider, this policy applies. If you do not have an imprint in your newsletters, you should adjust your newsletter template accordingly to avoid unnecessary difficulties.
About the CSA
The CSA (Certified Senders Alliance) is a positive list project that ensures whitelisting. This project was initiated jointly by the German Dialogue Marketing Association DDV and eco, the Association of the German Internet Industry. In addition to the senders, a large number of e-mail providers are also involved in the CSA in order to guarantee smooth delivery to the senders. Whitelisting thus ensures that e-mails from listed recipients do not end up in the spam folder from the provider’s side. The basis for admission to CSA whitelisting is compliance with certain organizational, legal and, above all, technical criteria in e-mail marketing.