When people start email marketing they find it interesting that you are required to put a physical address in order to send out your emails through a email service. It's a very common question whenever someone first starts to build a mailing on a website so I would like to address it today at my blog post. I had this same question when I started and I know lots of people are wondering the same thing.
“Why do I need to supply an physical address when I want to send out an email through an email marketing service?”
The simplest answer this question is that the spammers have ruined it for everyone! (haha) Everyone would love to trust everybody sending emails but unfortunately at this point in time you are required legally to have a physical address at the bottom of mass emails. Just in case you are wondering it's okay to have a PO Box for this type of thing according to the CAN-SPAM act . I don't really understand the whole reason behind it I just know that you have to do it because of the can spam act and other legislation targeted at preventing spammers from sending mass emails and protecting everyone against viruses, malware, social engineering tricks, and other bad email practices.
Now you might be thinking “Hey that's fine if I have to include a physical address in my email marketing at the bottom of each email then I will just include my home address.” I would not recommend using your home address because when I was running my eBay business I used to put my home address as the return address on the products that I was selling and I actually had a customer who was close to my house and show up at my house for a return which was crazy because people would usually just send me a message through eBay and then I would send him a return label and they would mail it back to me and I would refund them. Right after that happened I went to my local post office and rented a PO Box that I used as the return address. If you are subscribed to my email newsletter then you know that I also use my PO Box for my emails not because I don't like you guys but just because I don't want to give out my home address. ( I suspect you don't want to give out your home address either…) Now if you don't want to give out your home address here are a few different services that I would suggest you can use to get a physical address for your emails.
Solution #1: Get a Post Office Box
I would recommend a PO Box if you just getting started with the reason being that they charge according to PO box size so if you have a small box the price is like $10 a month versus $20-50 per month for a bigger PO box to receive large packages. In my second solution I will tell you what to do if you actually get to be receiving a lot of mail / letters that you don't want to have come to your actual house. I like the PO box solution because you just get a PO Box and you put that as your physical address and they really have a pretty cool system now where it sends me an email or text message when you have a new package or something in your PO box. This is great because I don't have to go up there everyday and check it. I just know when I get something and I can go up there and grab it so I don't waste time going back and forth the post office when there's nothing in my PO box. But like I said earlier I don't actually receive that much mail in my PO Box so I pay only like $10 / month but if you are going to be receiving a lot of physical mail then you want to check out solution number two which is a virtual mailbox.
Solution #2: Virtual Mailbox
Most people are confused when they hear about a virtual mailbox as to what it is and how everything will work with a virtual mailbox but it's actually pretty simple. So first off with a virtual mailbox you actually have a real address meaning there is a physical location that people would send their mail to and you will actually get the mail that they send. How works is you get an address with a company that offers virtual mailboxes and the prices range depending on how many pieces of mail you will receive every month. But basically if you receive some mail you can get the mail scanned and emailed to you or put in an online portal where you can check and see what mail you got and how you want them to handle your mail if you want them to shred it to scan it or return it to sender. This is a great service if you want to have an address I'll actually get mail and it's pretty cheap but also have an address to use for email marketing but if somebody actually wants the rate you a real letter then you can actually still receive that and respond.
In Conclusion
So there you have a guys two different solutions you can use to the you don't have to post your home address in the footer of your emails. If you want to use your home address for your email's physical address be my guest but I can't advise it and everybody I know who does email marketing does not use their home address so take that for what it is… I like the PO box solution because I don't get that much mail and I get notifications when I do have mail but if you have another solution that I don't know about or you like it better than my two solutions that I discussed in this post I would love to hear all about it in the comments below.