You might recall that in 2014, the Canada Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) was announced in order to require businesses to obtain consent from recipients when sending commercial electronic messages (CEMs). A transitioning period begun the summer of that year and it’s set to end next month on July 1st. During these years you were able to to continue sending messages to any customers as long as they don’t unsubscribe. But as of July 1st, your company will be only allowed to send email messages to customers if they have made a purchase in the last 2 years or some sort of inquiry in the last 6 months. The government is pretty serious about this and those who fail to comply to the new legislation will face stiff penalties. You can be charged up to 1 million dollars personally or up to 10 million for your business. So if you haven’t already done so, now is the time to reshape your company’s email strategy to avoid being penalized by CASL and simultaneously continue growing your business.
Check Your CEMs
You need an unsubscribe button on all of your CEMs. The people who receive your emails need to be able to unsubscribe from your updates at any given time or else you can face those previously mentioned severe punishments from the CASL. In addition to this feature, CASL requires you to include contact information as well. This would be the full name of the person sending the mail, the mail address and a link to your website.
Make Sure You Have Consent
In order to separate the subscribers that have given you explicit consent over the ones have only given implied consent, you need to go into your subscriber list and send an email to every single contact. Yes, you need consent from every contact. Let them know about the CASL rules and if they don’t respond before July 1st, take them off your subscriber list. And make sure to save all the messages of consent from your contacts as proof.
A Marketing Automation System Can Help
This is a good time as any to start implementing a marketing automation system. This would allow you to constantly manage and keep track of your contacts list. It will help you sort out your subscribers and you can set it in a way that it removes the ones that do not respond to your emails. And it will help you nurture any new leads that do come through.
If you have any more questions about CASL and the new regulations, don’t hesitate to message us as we would love to answer them for you.
BARIS OZMORALI
Social Media Marketing Coordinator
Mystique Brand Communications
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