Q: How can I monitor my affiliates who are using e-mail to be sure they are being CAN-SPAM compliant?
A: I’ve got two tools I’d recommend that you check out. First is LashBack.com, where they have a suite of tools to enable advertisers to monitor affiliate CAN-SPAM Act compliance.
Also, there is UnsubCentral.com, which enables you to manage your e-mail suppression list(s). This tool enables you to protect your suppression data via MD5-encoding, as well as controlling which affiliates can even access this information and e-mail creative.
Check out those two products and take them for a test drive.
If you don’t have the budget for LashBack.com and/or UnsubCentral.com, you can monitor your affiliates the old fashioned way – opt-in to their list(s). This is not perfect since their “real” list might not be out there for you to subscribe.
An important thing to note – be selective about which affiliates are able to send out e-mail. Don’t just make the creative and suppression list(s) publicly available, or else you may well get a call from the FTC due to spamming affiliates.