Email Compliance

Airship’s email service provides customers with a platform for building successful marketing programs while supporting compliance with applicable laws and regulations such as CAN-SPAM , General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) , and the Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications (the EU’s ePrivacy Directive).

See also Data Collection for the Email platform.

General requirements

You must obtain consent, provide disclosure, and designate email type.

Commercial and transactional email

Email messages generally fall into two categories:

• Commercial — This is primarily promotional content intended to market products or services.
  • Most jurisdictions require prior consent before sending.
  • Recipients must be able to easily unsubscribe.
• Transactional — This is content necessary to facilitate or complete a transaction, such as receipts, order confirmations, and account alerts.
  • Transactional email may not require consent, but must stay within the scope of the transaction.

When composing a message in Airship, designate the type of email. This ensures that unsubscribe handling, suppression logic, and analytics are applied appropriately. See Commercial vs. Transactional Email.

Consent management

Airship supports consent collection through:

• Forms and ScenesA mobile app or web experience of one or more screens displayed with fully native UI components in real time, providing immediate, contextual responses to user behaviors. Scenes can be presented in full-screen, modal, or embedded format using the default swipe/click mode or as a Story. They can also contain survey questions. — Collect email addresses and marketing permissions directly in Airship or using your own forms.
• API integration — Sync subscriber consent status from external systems.

Your subscriber lists should only include recipients who have given the required consent for the type of messages you send.

Unsubscribe handling and suppression management

For commercial messages, Airship enforces unsubscribe compliance:

• Unsubscribe links — Add to templates or message footers.
• Automatic suppression — Airship suppresses unsubscribed addresses, excluding from future commercial sends.
• Bounce handling — Airship suppresses hard-bounced addresses to maintain deliverability.

Airship also suppresses addresses marked as spam complaints, where feedback loops are available. Suppression helps you stay compliant and protect your sender reputation. See Email Bounce Handling and Suppression.

You can review unsubscribed and suppressed addresses using the Contact Management tool. See Removing email suppression in Contact Management.

Data collection and tracking

Airship collects email performance data such as delivery, open, click, bounce, spam complaint, and unsubscribe events. See Data Collection.

Tracking considerations

Event tracking, specifically open tracking, in Airship operates using pixels placed in emails that detect opens through pixel rendering detection.

Before enabling event tracking, ensure you have collected the appropriate consent and configured tracking accordingly.

In many jurisdictions, pixel tracking must be disabled by default and is subject to prior consent. These are two standard methods for ensuring prior consent is received:

• Obtain consent at the time of email collection: This method requires adequate disclosures, for example, information about the purposes of tracking and a link to an applicable privacy policy, and an opt-in checkbox that is not pre-selected when data subjects provide their email address.

• Obtain consent using a link embedded in an email without a tracking pixel: This method may be appropriate after initial email collection. It requires sending an email without a tracking pixel that links to a page where recipients can review adequate disclosures and opt in to the use of tracking pixels using an opt-in checkbox that is not pre-selected.

Tracking controls

Configure tracking to align with your privacy commitments:

• Channel-level control — Disable open and click tracking for specific email channels using Contact Management, CSV import, or API. See the following section, Managing tracking opt-in status.

• Message-level control — Disable tracking for individual sends, even if the channel is opted in.

Managing tracking opt-in status

You have multiple options for managing the tracking opt-in status for an email channel:

In the dashboard, go to Audience, then Contact Management, search for an email channel, and select the arrow icon () for the channel. You can then edit each tracking option.

The Contact Management tool is an AXP feature. If you are not on AXP, you can view Tracking for an email channel but not change status. See Viewing channel details in Contact Management.

Using CSV upload or the API, specify dates for open_tracking_opted_in / open_tracking_opted_out or click_tracking_opted_in / click_tracking_opted_out with:

• Create and SendA way to target recipients of a single channel type by providing a list of user identifiers when creating a message. You can send to Channel IDs, email addresses, phone numbers, or Open channel addresses. Unknown identifiers are registered as new email, SMS, and Open channels. CSV upload in the Message composer or using the Create and Send API
• CSV upload for setting tags and attributes or for associating channels with Named UsersA customer-provided identifier used for mapping multiple devices and channels to a specific individual.
• The Email Channel Registration API

By default, new channels are opted in to both open and click tracking. A channel can be opted out of tracking by setting an opted out date. The channel can be opted back in to tracking by setting an opted in date that is newer than the opted out date.

Data access and auditing

For compliance reporting and auditing, export email engagement data or stream events to your systems in real time using Airship’s APIs. See Compliance events For Email and SMS in Real-Time Data Streaming.