emailrules.today
Stop 2 of 8DeepThe hour before send

CEMA

Washington State law used against misleading commercial email subject lines — active lawsuit territory.

Say it out loud

“A Washington state law about subject lines. False urgency in a subject line is a live legal risk in the US, not just a taste question.”

Washington's Commercial Electronic Mail Act has been used against false or misleading subject lines, and the Washington Supreme Court has addressed what counts. The exposure is real for US consumer senders, because you do not choose whether you email Washington residents — your list does.

The testSubject lines that have drawn claimsOur framingscrolls →
"FINAL HOURS" — on a sale that ran again next week

The urgency was not true. That is the whole theory of the case.

"Your order" — on a promotional send

Implies a transaction that does not exist.

"Re: our conversation" — with no prior conversation
"You've been selected" — for something everyone got
The test is not whether it worked. It is whether it was true.

Yours

Nobody does this for you.

What goes wrong

Running an evergreen “ends tonight” countdown that resets. It is the single most common conversion tactic in ecommerce email and it is the exact fact pattern.

The dated rules behind this

A definition is not a citation. These are the pages with the primary source, the date it was published, and what to do about it.

See also

Where this sits

Stop 2, you build the message. You choose a From address, write a subject line, and add the things the law requires to be in the message.

← BeforeTransactional emailNext →DKIM

FAQ

Awkward questions

Who is this actually for?

People who ship email and are too busy to re-read every PDF: week-one marketers, lifecycle/CRM, deliverability, multi-country ops, DTC brands, agencies — on Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Braze, HubSpot, SFMC, or something else. Pick your tool and geos so product-specific pages only appear when they match. EU and UK are first-class filters. Not for people who sell tools about email and need a fake score to demo.

Why only ~40 rules? Isn’t that… thin?

On purpose. A wall of 400 undated “best practices” is how you look busy and still get burned. Every page needs a primary source we actually read. Thin and checkable beats fat and folklore. Europe, bulk inbox rules, measurement honesty, and protocol topics like BIMI/DMARC policy are on the shelf when we can cite them — not every Member State and not every vendor myth. Coverage map lists what we still refuse to invent.

Is this legal advice?

No. If it were, you’d have a billable hour and a longer PDF. This is a dated operator reference written by an email geek. Confirm anything high-stakes with counsel who knows your facts. Same for “will this make me compliant?” — no tool does that. Lawyers and judges do. We say what the sources say and what to do first on Monday.

Why no trust score out of 100?

Because we refuse to invent a number you can’t audit. Fake scores sell seed tests and panic. You get findings, dates, and links. If that feels less exciting than a red dial, good — you’re not the red-dial customer.

Why should I trust you more than my ESP’s blog?

ESPs sell seats. Seed-score vendors sell fear. AI invents citations when nobody watches. We sell nothing today — no pixels, no placement scores, no affiliate — so we can say when a tool is the problem. A human verifies, dates, and corrects in public. Tools may help draft; they do not ship unsourced claims. Check the primary links. Fail that test and leave.

Do I need an account?

No. Filters live in this browser and the URL. Share the link. That’s it. Accounts come later only if they earn it — not so we can nurture you about email.

I’m an agency. Where’s multi-client mode?

We tried a client-name CRM on the setup card. It made the product feel like work before it felt useful. Role filters + copy link + one-page brief (optional PDF title) is enough for now. Complexity comes back when the free shelf is habit, not before.

Is the quiet changelog a bug?

No. Quiet means nothing material moved. We don’t invent urgency so the homepage looks “alive.” Sticky risks still show what usually needs a person when the market is still.