Acceptable Use Policy (“Sending Email/SMS Policy”)

Last updated: FEBRUARY 19, 2024

Nothing personal, but we are in this together. Any prohibited action taken by a NALO subscriber may affect our email system as a whole. So we have taken time, to put this together to ensure that subscribers follow this Acceptable Use Policy document to keep our system safe. 

If you violate this policy, we may suspend or terminate your account. We may also suspend or terminate accounts according to our Terms of Use where we see behavior, content, or other factors that pose a threat to our platform. We may also increase set a fine if you cross our acceptable thresholds for sending email.

Mailing List 

You are allowed to have up to a 1,000 contacts on the free mailing list plan. This is activated for the first time you are uploading a list.

You are charged GHS 0.04 pesewas for every additional contact you upload on your mailing list.

Mailing list contacts are cumulative, thus, you can have several lists with contacts. Immediately it reaches 1000 contacts, you are moved onto the premium plan which is GHS 0.04 per every contact you add.

For example, after your 1,000 free contacts are exhausted, and you have 800 more contacts to add you will be charged a one time fee of GHS 32.00 (800*0.04)

You are deducted GHS 0.04 from your credit balance after you exhaust your 1,000 free contacts.

Contacts List Upload

You are in charge of protecting the privacy of all contacts you upload to the mailing list. However, NALO, takes a step further in making sure these contact’s privacy is protected. We will ask you to agree to (i) expressly obtaining permission from contacts before sending them messages. (ii) You will only send legal and legitimate information through the NALO Platform. (iii) You must agree to all the sending policies regarding “acceptable use” in using our email platform anytime you want to upload a list before you can upload any contact on the platform. 

These are among several checks we make to ensure that subscribers’ privacy is protected. 

Expressly Obtaining Permission

Permission to send messages should be expressly obtained. Express permission in the form of writing or verbal agreement.

It is prohibited to send messages to any person who has not expressed their consent to receive such information from the subscriber. We would like to note that the subscriber’s consent may not be presumed or inferred from the statements of other content. In addition, subscribers may withdraw their consent at any time. 

NALO strictly prohibits users from renting, leasing and/or purchasing email addresses from a third party, as well as from gathering them through surreptitious methods, such as scraping or harvesting. The use of any kinds of automated solutions, software or scripts is strictly prohibited. The User may store, manage the data and send electronic information only to those recipients who have expressly agreed to receive such information from the User.

We reserve the right to verify the list of subscribers imported by the User in terms of their quality, i.e. among others possessing required approvals for the sending of electronic messages, the existence of spam traps, or misspellings. The negative result of such a verification entitles us to reject the imported list.

Blacklisting 

Whenever you are uploading a mailing list, we will check through our list to remove all bounced and failed contacts from that list. We will upload the final list to your mailing list. 

Each message sent from the Account shall contain an unsubscribe link by default. Whenever a user clicks on the subscribe link, the contact is immediately removed from your list. The mailing list is automatically updated to ensure that a Subscriber that has opted out will not be sent any further mailings from that Account. Users are expressly prohibited from removing, altering or hiding the unsubscribe link, or from charging any fee, requiring any personally identifying information other than an email address, or requiring the Contact to take any step other than sending a reply email or visiting a single page, as a condition for honoring an opt-out request.

Once a Contact has opted out, the User must not send them further messages or sell or transfer their email addresses, even in the form of a mailing list. NALO automatically handles all unsubscribe requests on User’s behalf, and lists Contacts that have opted out in the User’s Account.

Legal and Legitimate Messages

By using NALO, you agree to use the platform to send only legal and legitimate messages.

Please don’t use NALO to send anything offensive, to promote anything illegal, or to harass anyone. You may not send:

  • Emails offering to sell illegal goods or services
  • Emails that violate CAN-SPAM Laws
  • Pornography/sexually explicit content
  • Campaigns promoting or supporting terrorism or violent extremism
  • Counterfeit products or products that infringe the intellectual property rights of others, including trademark, copyright, design or patent rights

Some industries have higher-than-average abuse complaints, which can jeopardize deliverability. In order to maintain the reliability of our platform, we may not allow businesses that offer these types of services, products, or content:

  • Escort services, mail-order bride/spouse finders, international marriage brokers, and other similar sites and services
  • Hookup, swinger, or sexual encounter sites or services
  • Work-at-home scams, make money online, and lead generation opportunities
  • Gambling services or products
  • Selling “Likes” or followers for a social media platform
  • There may be additional industries, products, and content that we do not allow for select features and functionalities.

Acceptable Thresholds

At NALO we have defined some statistics our team references when reviewing email accounts for the best sending practices. Please familiarize yourself with this chart and work to stay below these acceptable thresholds. Accounts with statistics above these numbers can face account suspension and in some cases, termination.

Statistic ThresholdsAcceptable Levels*
Bounces<=4%
Unsubscribes<=1.4%
SPAM Complaints<=0.2%

SPAM

Spam, also known as junk mail, is unsolicited commercial email messages, especially (but not only) bulk email messages. “Unsolicited” means that the recipient has not provided verifiable permission for the message to be sent. “Bulk” means that the message is sent as part of a larger collection of messages, all having substantively identical content. The term “spamming” refers to transmitting, distributing or delivering any unsolicited commercial e-mail correspondence, especially in mass quantities, through electronic means of communication.

Prohibited Actions

  • We work hard to maintain the positive reputation of our platform, but we count on our Members to pitch in too. You may not:
  • Send Spam. Spam can be in the form of bulk emails or one to one commercial emails.
  • You must be able to point to an opt-in form or show other evidence of consent for any commercial or marketing email you send.
  • Include in your Campaigns, Websites, Ads, or account or sell in your Store any material that wasn’t created by you, provided for you to use, or that would violate anyone’s rights. That includes text, photos, graphics, and other content.
  • Use any misleading or incorrect names, addresses, email addresses, subject lines, or other information in the Service or in any Campaigns created, managed, or sent using our Service.
  • Share your password.
  • Decipher, decompile, disassemble, or reverse engineer any of the Software.
  • Use any of the Software to create a competing product.
  • Send marketing emails that do not contain a NALO unsubscribe mechanism or send emails that use an external unsubscribe process.
  • Set up multiple accounts for any person or entity in order to send similar content, unless you’re part of a franchise or agency.
  • Import or incorporate any of this information into any account, audience, emails, or otherwise upload to our servers: Social Security numbers, passwords, security credentials, or sensitive personal information.
  • Upload or send email Campaigns to purchased, rented, third-party, co-reg, publicly available data, or partner lists of any kind.
  • Sell or offer to sell any counterfeit products or products that infringe the intellectual property rights of others, including trademark, copyright, design or patent rights.