Pre-existing Business Relationship

For email marketing, a preexisting business relationship is one that exists between the initiator and the recipient of email messages. This relationship is important for sending mass email communications to a subscriber list. Email marketers must be conscious of the affirmative consent clause that states that the marketers may only send mass communications to individual email users who has provided affirmative consent through an opt-in process, or to email users with whom the marketer has a preexisting business relationship.

For users to qualify as a preexisting business relationship, the recipient must have been the recipient of a business transaction with the marketer within a five year period upon ending, or opting out of, these marketing communications. These business transactions include the transfer of information, or the receipt of goods or services from the marketer, even those free of charge. After receiving these goods or at the time of transaction, the recipient must also receive a clear notice of an opportunity to not receive further marketing messages from the provider.

This preexisting business relationship clause is in place to allow businesses to provide customers with relationship or transactional messages. However, because of this clause, some email marketers take this as consent to send marketing communications that the recipient may not be interested in with the 5-years of the user’s last transactions. While this may result in a larger mailing list, uninterested users may also mark these messages as spam.