New Email Regulations in Canada starting July 1st 2014

Hi Joey

I live in Canada and write email marketing content, so I've had to be aware of CASL's rules as well. It also applies to anyone doing business with Canadian individuals or businesses.

I've written an article outlining the basics here: http://www.goodbooks.ca/alert-casl-i...small-business

Basically, you cannot send commercial email to anyone without prior permission. Permission is divided into two streams: Express and Implied Consent.

Examples of Implied consent occur when you meet someone at a networking event, and exchange business cards. When you give someone a card, you imply that you would like them to contact you.

Express consent means having someone opt in to your list.

It's pretty complicated legislation, but I've outlined the basics in my article.

Temi

Hi Joey -

The following is strictly my opinion. I'm not a lawyer or an authority on CASL.

No, compliance with Can spam is not enough, since CASL is revised legislation that is more serious and this law has teeth. $200 for each email offence to a maximum of 1 million. Businesses max at 10 million.

While there are some similarities between the two, CASL is what you are concerned with. If you go to Youtube, you'll find some webinars on the subject. I thought the one from High Road Solutions was the most informative. I'd post the links, but since I'm new here, I don't know yet if that's allowed.

Here are just a couple of points as I've interpreted them...

a) You can't make first contact. You must obtain prior non-digital consent from the intended recipient before any commercial email gets sent. Such as face to face contact, they phone/email you first, etc. If you're a list builder like I am, this puts a crimp in things because this is what we do. There might be a way to do this on your website - something I haven't discovered yet.

b) You must have a non-vanishing unsubscribe link with no more than one re-direct.

There are two facets to the law. Implied consent and express consent. Implied consent means that you have two years from now to obtain express consent. This doesn't mean that you can bomb people until 2016 because you have to be able to produce records that demonstrate even implied consent.

This is what I'm doing – you do as you wish...

Until I have greater understanding of the law, I'm completely evacuating all .ca addresses from my list, and am only buying ads from vendors that can assure me of traffic that makes a wide detour around Canada.

As the lady in the webinar said, this legislation is the equivalent of taking a hammer to a mosquito. because, as everybody knows, Canada is the main global breeding ground for sending malicious emails.

It's amazing that we voted these people into office. I'm hoping for the day when we require our law makers to first submit their proposed legislation to pass the sniff test for the abscence of excessive stupidity. Minor supidity is fine...it's actually expected.

Hope this has helped a bit. All the best.

Hi Jacob.

I was at an internet marketing seminar this weekend and this was one of the topics that cam up.

From what I understand in simple terms, I believe that you have to have double opt-ins for all campaigns. If someone from Canada doesn't confirm their email as part of the double opt-in, then you could be in breach of the new rules. Crazy yes but I'm sure that there is some good reasoning behind it.

Unfortunately I don't know how that will affect previous opt-ins ? Maybe you can send a new email to all exsting Canadian customers and ask them to confirm they still want to receive emails....

I'm not sure.

Frasser
Fiveinthemorningdotcom