CANBERRA: Lululemon Athletica Australia Pty Ltd has paid a A$702,900 penalty after Australia’s communications regulator found the retailer sent hundreds of thousands of commercial emails that did not include a way for recipients to unsubscribe. The Australian Communications and Media Authority announced the outcome on March 11, saying the breaches involved emails that presented as customer service messages but also contained marketing material, triggering obligations under national spam laws.
The regulator said more than 370,000 emails were sent without an unsubscribe facility between Dec. 1, 2024, and Jan. 5, 2025. ACMA said the messages included order and delivery updates that also promoted products and sales, meaning they were treated as commercial electronic messages. Under Australia’s Spam Act, commercial emails generally must include a functional option for recipients to opt out, even when tied to a transaction.
ACMA said it issued an infringement notice setting the penalty and that the payment resolves the notice. The notice cited 32,783 contraventions used to calculate the amount, drawn from messages sent over five days from Dec. 10 to Dec. 14, 2024. The regulator said it began investigating in April 2025 and assessed that the relevant email templates lacked an unsubscribe option despite containing commercial content.
Compliance Undertaking and Oversight
Alongside the penalty, ACMA said Lululemon entered a court-enforceable undertaking that requires the company to strengthen its compliance controls. The undertaking includes an independent review of marketing and customer messaging systems, staff training for employees involved in email communications, and changes to internal processes designed to ensure required unsubscribe functions are included. ACMA said Lululemon must also provide progress reporting as the compliance work is implemented.
ACMA said the case highlights risks for businesses that treat “service” messages as exempt from spam requirements when the content includes promotional material or direct links to shopping and sales. The regulator said it has taken multiple enforcement actions in the past 18 months involving similar conduct, and that more than A$6.7 million in spam penalties have been paid across those actions. ACMA said businesses should ensure compliance systems cover mixed-purpose messages.
What ACMA Found in the Emails
In its findings, ACMA said the emails contravened requirements in the Spam Act by not including an unsubscribe facility in commercial electronic messages. The regulator said it considered the inclusion of promotional wording and embedded links to product categories and shopping pages as indicators of a commercial purpose. ACMA also said it rejected arguments that the messages should be treated as a designated category of communications exempt from the unsubscribe requirement, given the marketing elements present in the templates reviewed.
Lululemon said it worked cooperatively with the regulator during the investigation and has reviewed and updated its customer messaging templates used in Australia, including order confirmations and delivery notifications, to ensure they meet unsubscribe and other spam compliance requirements. – By Content Syndication Services.