What the new anti-spam law means to you and your business.
"Listening to the wind of change ..."
OK so I’m not the best singer but change is happening. As of July 1, 2014 the new Canadian Anti-spam Law comes into effect. If you’re not familiar with it, you need to. This new piece of legislation effects how to you commercially communicate with others albeit by personal emails, texts, instant messaging or any other electronic method. Wow that’s a lot of change.
What it was before
Before this CASL Canada didn’t have a specific anti-span legislation that covered everything. Canadian businesses had to comply with a peppering of other legislations like PIPITA, but these legislations didn’t cover all aspects of communication including personal correspondence and emerging technologies like text messaging.
The gist of CASL
CASL is formed to protect Canadians (individuals and businesses) from unwanted commercial communication from any source.
What this means to you
Whether you communicate directly to Canadians by:
- mass email distributor (i.e. mailchimp.com, campaignmonitor.com)
- personal email
- text messages
- instant messaging
- messages sent through social media
If the message is commercial in nature, with or without intent to profit, you have to abide by the legislation. Take a moment to wrap your head around this. This effectively ends cold calling by electronic means. You now have to get creative to grow your list of people and companies you want to sell or talk directly to.
How to comply
Obtain Consent: Expressed
When sending commercial communications electronically the recipient has to have previously agreed to receive communication from you, also called “opted-in”.
Valid opting-in methods:
- Electronic sign-up forms
- Verbal confirmation
- Paper sign-up forms
In all methods you have to have a mechanism that says, “Yes I want to receive communication” and the responsability is on the sender. Meaning that you have to prove that someone opted-in if you are reported.
Obtain Consent: Implied
You can send commercial communication to someone if they have purchased a product or service within the last 24 months. And if you’re a registered charity or political party and the recipient has made a donation/gift, volunteered or attendant a meeting organized by you.
When obtaining consent
A few requirements:
- Provide your name
- Provide a clear description on what they will be receiving
- Provide a physical mail address, phone number and email/website
- If you have a check box for the permission, it cannot be set to opt-in by default
Provide a way out
With all communication you send you have to provide an option to opt-out. People who have been sending emails by a mass distributor should be familiar with this concept since most of those applications make it mandatory to have this mechanism built in before they send the email.
Now with the new methods of communication that CASL covers this means that all other forms will need you to state something like, “If you don’t want to receive further communications or this has reached you in error please do this action”. Actions can be a click here to unsubscribe, reply and tell me you unsubscribe, text ### to unsubscribe, ect … The wording doesn’t really matter, it’s that you provide the way out that does.
State who you are – clearly
This is another requirement that email distributors require but hasn’t applied to other forms in the past. Now you have to clearly say who you are and give the recipient your physical mailing address and contact number. Something as simple as adding your contact info to your email signature will make your personal correspondence compliant.
Exemptions
The following are exempted from the CASL legislation:
- Fax transmissions
- Sending to a family member or with whom you have a personal relationship
- Responding to correspondence from the recipient
- Sending to an individual associated with your business
- Sending a message that will be opened in a foreign country (CASL exempts 116 countries. Read the list.)
- Sending on behalf of a charity or political organization for the purpose of fund raising
- Providing information about a product or service for warranty, recall, safety or security purposes.
- Providing information about a warranty, recall, safety or security about a product or service purchased or used by a recipient.
- Delivering product upgrades or updates
Referral exemption
You can send a single commercial communication to someone that hasn’t opted-in to receiving from you if you are referred from someone else, but you have to tell the recipient:
- Who you are
- Who referred you
- Your referrals contact information
and
- The person that refers you has to be a family member or has a personal/business relationship with the recipient.
If you fail to obtain consent in that single communication for further communication, you cannot send them any other information or follow up.
Resources
To read more about CASL here’s a list of handy websites:
http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/casl-lcap.htm
http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/030.nsf/eng/h_00211.html
http://kb.mailchimp.com/article/about-the-canada-anti-spam-law-casl/
http://www.bennettjones.com/casl/