Three Florida-based affiliate marketers charged with using illegal spam e-mail, false weight-loss claims, and phony celebrity endorsements to market bogus weight-loss products. As a result, they will pay $500,000 to settle Federal Trade Commission charges. The court order resolving the FTC’s allegations also prohibits the defendants from the illegal advertising and marketing tactics alleged in the complaint.

According to the FTC’s June 2016 complaint, Colby Fox; his companies, Tachht, Inc. and Teqqi, LLC; and a fourth defendant paid affiliate marketers to send consumers millions of illegal spam emails from hacked email accounts. They made it appear that the messages came from the consumers’ family members, friends, or other contacts. The email messages appeared to be a quick note from a family member or friend, passing along a link to an interesting news story.

The case settled for half a million dollars, but brings to light a couple of important things...

1. Stay away from false claims;
2. Be careful of affiliates sending out your offers. Most of all, make sure you know where your affiliates are actually getting their leads from and control the messaging as much as possible.

Here's the link to the full press release:
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2017/03/ftc-settlement-bars-spam-email-marketing-baseless-weight-loss

For over a decade Heather Seitz used email marketing to build successful companies. She had to solve the biggest barrier to consistent profitability: deliverability. Today she is the Co-Founder and CEO of Email Delivered.

To know more about FTC's decision on the CAN Spam settlement, visit : http://www.emaildelivered.com/ftc-settles-can-spam/. ‎  Remember to sign up for the FREE Email Delivered Pulse newsletter for articles, tips, and recommended resources for email marketers.

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