Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation
Recently Lisa Kember of Constant Contact was at the London Convention Centre for a seminar presented by CanSPEP on How to Boost Your Social Media Marketing. Kember shared a lot of great tips on how to properly leverage email marketing campaigns, briefly touching on something that could soon be impacting your business’ email marketing campaign; Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL).
CASL is scheduled to come into effect in 2012, with a three year transition period built in for companies to take steps to comply with the legislation.
The legislation has a lot to offer, and covers many different things. Consider this week’s blog a Cole’s Notes Introduction to the legislation. The focus of this synopsis will be mailing lists and e-blasts.
Keypoints:
With the new legislation you will be required to have Express Consent or Implied Consent for the members of your mailing list.
Express Consent in simple terms is someone explicitly conveying that they wish to receive your emails.
How do you get express consent?
You need to be clear on the purpose for the consent (i.e. to sign-up for your monthly newsletter)
You need to get their name and contact information
You need to provide them with information on how to unsubscribe if they later choose to do so.
Implied Consent is perceived consent based on former express consent, ongoing commercial relationships (business contacts/clients) or non-commercial relationships (volunteer or donor relationships).
There are some exceptions to consent, but error on the side of caution and try to obtain expressed consent as often as possible.
It appears that consent will have a shelf-life of sorts. It seems that the consent or the action that implied consent has to have occurred within two years of the contact.
This could impact how vendors collect contacts at events or Trade Shows. It seems that vendors will now have to individually collect contact information; instead of have a central collection that shares all collected contacts with all the vendors. People have to know who their contact information is going and what it will be used for, because of that, a central collection isn’t really valid, especially for events with a lot of vendors.
The Message (or e-blast) itself has some new requirements as well.
In the message you must identify the sender (this can include “on behalf of”) and include contact information for your business or organization (address, phone, email).
The message must have a subject that reflects the content of the message; you cannot use deceptive subject lines.
Lastly you must include an option to unsubscribe (there are additional rules around opt-outs, including a 10 business day period to comply with the request)
You have 3 years until you are forced to comply, but why not start now? In your next e-blast include an option for subscribers to update their subscription. Simply include a link to a form where subscribers can update or verify their information; include information reiterating what they are signing up for and how to unsubscribe (should they ever choose to) and you will generate express consent. It is fairly simple, and once subscribers fill out the form, you just need to keep a record of it.
New Legislation often seems to be a bit of a head-ache for businesses, but if you educate yourself, making the transition to comply with CASL won’t be too difficult and may even provided you with a more engaged audience.
There is much more information available about this legislation. This blog is merely an introduction. Take some time to research CASL for yourself so that you and your business or organization can make a smooth transition.
Here are a few other links to get you started:
http://www.slideshare.net/fmclaw/casl-vs-canspam-canadas-antispam-law
http://www.mcmillan.ca/Canadas-anti-spam-legislation-CASL----Canadas-antispam-law
UPDATE
David Canton is a business lawyer and trade-mark agent with a practice focusing on technology issues and technology companies. He currently resides in London Ontario and works for Harrison-Pensa.
In January of 2013 David Canton began publishing a series on Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation; links can be found below (links to be added as available).
The Anti-Spam Act – Part 1 of 5 – Introduction
Part II: The definition and treatment of Spam
The Anti-Spam Act – Part 3 of 5 – Other things in the Act
The Anti-Spam Act – Part 4 of 5 – Things we can do now to prepare
The Anti-Spam Act – Part 5 of 5 – Challenges going forward
Hello,
Hello,
I am slightly confused about implied consent. If a store requires that a person input their e-mail in order to check-out, does purchasing the item (thereby filling in the e-mail field) count as implying consent to receiving e-mails from the store?
Thanks,
Alfred
Hi Alfred,
Hi Alfred,
Thank you for reading our blog on the Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation.
Lisa Kember provided us with a great introduction to the Canadian Anti-Spam legislation last year. Based on what Kember shared with us, implied consent is generated three ways; hopefully this clarification will help.
Consent based on previous express consent: meaning you previously agreed to received the emails and there is a continued relationship.
Consent based on an ongoing commercial relationship: this would be created by an ongoing business relationship, for example if you repeatedly shopped with the same company or did business with someone.
Non-commercial relationships: if you were a ongoing donor or volunteer with a group, this would establish a non-commercial relationship.
This is our basic understanding of the Canadian Anti-Spam legislation, as it was shared with us. As we are not expert on this topic, we encourage you to keep researching this topic and find articles from people who are experts on the Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation. We've provided a few links at the end of this blog, but are certain many more articles will be written as this legislation comes into effect this year.
Hi there,
Hi there,
Thank you for posting this article. It shares some excellent information regarding the new laws and this definitely affects our business. I have a few thousand e-mails that I have collected over the course of the past few years but now I am not sure whether I should send them an introductory e-mail asking if they want to subscribe to the newsletter or if I can just start my e-mail newsletter and give them the option to unsubscribe.
Any help is appreciated.
Thank you again for your post.
Hi Roger,
Hi Roger,
Glad to hear that this blog was helpful. That is a great question. My first suggestion would be to visit the blogs we have linked to. David Canton is fantastic on this topic.
From our understanding in having heard Lisa Kember, sending them an introductory newsletter that prominently explains how their email address will be used and asking them to opt in to the newsletter would generate express consent. Requiring them to opt out, would not do this, as some might not even read the email. From there, those who opt-in build your new contact list that you can use to send your newsletter.
Good luck and thank you for your comment.
I am happy for the share here
I am happy for the share here for the readers about the anti spam measures by the government and this will ensure the peace and security to the internet users against the fraud. All I can say is that the sharing is one of the best.
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