‘Get Wines Direct’ App warned for breaching the Spam Act; Officeworks records 8% sales boost: Midday Roundup

Retail wine merchant Get Wines Direct has been issued a formal warning for breaches of the Spam Act for sending unsolicited marketing emails.

The Spam Act 2003 regulates unsolicited commercial electronic messages in Australia. It covers emails, SMS text messages, MMS picture messages, instant messages or any other similar message that includes a marketing/commercial element.

An ACMA (Australian Communications and Media Authority) investigation identified that in the process of rebuilding its marketing database, Get Wines Direct included email addresses of users who had previously unsubscribed.

When Get Wines Direct became aware that messages were being sent to these users, it did not cease its marketing campaigns or take steps to stop misdirected emails.

The investigation concluded Get Wines Direct sent some marketing messages without the consent of recipients.

Officeworks records 8% sales boost

Officeworks has delivered an 8% rise in sales to $403 million for the first quarter of financial year 2015.

This rise follows the 10.8% growth by the company in FY14 in earnings to $103 million.

Officeworks managing director Mark Ward said the strong performance is a result of the company’s ‘every channel’ approach, which aims to provide customers with a seamless shopping experiences.

“We want to ensure customers can choose to shop whenever, wherever and however they want so we’ve improved our offer across all channels and that’s really paying off,” Ward said in a statement.

Local shares up despite weak US lead

The Australian share market this morning looked positive, despite a weak lead overnight from Wall St.

The ASX200 was up 24 points, or 0.4%, to 5471.7 points at 12:00pm AEDT. The Dow Jones closed down 31.44 points, or 0.18%, to 16,974.3 points overnight.

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