emailrules.today
Stop 1 of 8Week oneWeeks or years earlier

Opt-in

The person actively agreed to receive your marketing email before you send it.

Say it out loud

“They asked us to email them. We did not decide for them.”

Opt-in means permission first. How strict that has to be depends entirely on the country: the EU and UK generally need a clear affirmative yes, while US federal law is built the other way round and lets you send until someone asks you to stop.

The testIs this an opt-in?Published valuesscrolls →
An unticked box the person ticked YES
A box already ticked when the page loaded NO

Pre-ticked is the textbook failure in the EU and UK.

"By ordering you agree to our terms and updates" NO

Consent bundled into something else is not freely given.

They typed their address into a box marked YES
"Get our newsletter" and pressed the button
They bought something and said nothing DEPENDS

This is the soft opt-in question, and it has four conditions. See below.

You bought the list NO

Consent is not transferable. Nobody agreed to hear from you.

Yours

Nobody does this for you.

What goes wrong

Treating a shipping-address field as a marketing sign-up. The person gave you an address to receive a parcel notification, which is a different purpose, and in the EU that distinction is the whole case.

Not the same as

Double opt-in
Double opt-in is an opt-in plus a confirmation click. Stronger evidence, same underlying permission.

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 1, you get the address. Someone hands you an email address, and the terms of that handover decide everything after it.

← BeforeConsentNext →CASL

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.