What Is CAN-SPAM Act?

The CAN-SPAM Act (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act) is the United States federal law, passed in 2003 and effective January 1, 2004, that sets the rules for commercial email. Unlike the EU's GDPR or Canada's CASL, CAN-SPAM does not require recipient consent before sending - unsolicited commercial email, including B2B cold email, is legal in the US provided the sender follows its requirements: header information (From, Reply-To, routing) must be accurate, subject lines must not be deceptive, the message must be identifiable as an ad where applicable, it must include the sender's valid physical postal address, it must offer a clear opt-out mechanism, and opt-out requests must be honored within 10 business days. The Federal Trade Commission enforces the law, with civil penalties that adjust for inflation and currently exceed $50,000 per violating email, where each individual email can count as a separate violation.

CAN-SPAM Act in Practice

In practice, CAN-SPAM compliance for cold email is straightforward and cheap, which makes non-compliance inexcusable. Every message includes the sender's real name and company, a working reply address, a physical mailing address in the signature or footer (a registered office or virtual business address is acceptable), and a way to opt out - which in one-to-one style cold email is often a plain-text line inviting the recipient to reply if they want no further contact, rather than an unsubscribe link. Opt-outs must be suppressed across all campaigns and mailboxes, not just the one that generated the request, so senders maintain a global suppression list in their sending platform. The most common misconception is that CAN-SPAM bans cold email - it explicitly does not; it regulates it. The second is scope: CAN-SPAM covers senders mailing US recipients, but a US company emailing prospects in the EU or UK also falls under GDPR and PECR respectively, so international campaigns must satisfy the strictest applicable regime, not just US law.