Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation - What you need to know

Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) takes effect on July 1, 2014.

This legislation will help reduce unwanted emails from appearing in consumers’ inboxes by requiring companies to gain consent.

If you run a home-based or small business and if you use the Internet, mobile devices or social media to promote your products, services or business you need to know how this legislation impacts your email marketing campaigns.

Does your mailing list comply?

If you are sending a commercial electronic message (CEM) to an electronic address, then you need to comply with three requirements. You need to:

obtain consent
provide identification information
provide an unsubscribe mechanism

Have you obtained consent?

If you’re using MailChimp it’s easy to comply. MailChimp requires that you identify yourself and automatically includes an unsubscribe mechanism. So the only issue that we need worry about is consent.

If your site uses a subscription widget and all your subscribers opted in by using that form, then you’re in compliance.

However, if you’ve imported a list or added contacts directly into MailChimp, I suggest that before July 1st you send an email to your mailing list seeking expressed consent.

If you’re not using MailChimp or another newsletter subscription service you can read more here to get started.