email marketers are often confused about the difference between a bounce rate and an inbox deliverability rate. Most email broadcast systems in the U.S. and Europe report something called "delivered." It's usually a pretty high number - like 98% or 93%. And your ESP would like you to judge them on that number, because it's really high, and it's easy for them to be confident that it will stay high.

20 percent of legitimate marketers' email messages were routed to spam folders or blocked entirely in the first quarter of 2009. Five percent of messages were found in spam folders, with even more - 15 percent - unaccounted for.

Yes, transactional messages must comply with CAN-SPAM, though there is a different set of requirements for transactional messages. It’s true, you DON’T have to offer up an unsubscribe mechanism, nor do you have to respect unsubscribe requests. Meaning, you can send a transactional message to somebody who has unsubscribed. But, BE CAREFUL! Keep in mind that CAN-SPAM is not the only consideration here!

The closest legislation relating to email in India is the newly amended Information Technology Act of 2000. It was previously ammended in 2006, and Indian lawmakers amended the IT Act again in December of 2008. However, the 2008 amendments have yet to be published in the Gazette of India and still do not address email.