While we cannot provide legal advice, we feel it is important to provide you with our interpretation of how the Canadian federal law may affect you. This is a summary of some provisions of the law, and is not a full analysis of how it may apply to you. If you believe you may be affected, you should consult with your own attorney.
What you need to know
CASL is short for the Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation that went into effect July 1, 2014. It requires the sender of commercial electronic email to obtain permission BEFORE they are allowed to send to the email recipient and contains truthful header and non-misleading header information, proper identification of the sending party and time limit. According to the Canadian government, any email sent to or from a Canadian computer, mailbox, or network falls under jurisdiction of CASL. The law is intended to protect electronic commerce in Canada by deterring the dangerous and damaging forms of spam, like identity theft, phishing, and spyware.
How it affects you
Individuals, companies, or businesses who do business in Canada need to comply with these laws. For all Canadian email addresses added to your list after July 1, 2014, CASL requires you to document consent, either implied or express. As a Constant Contact customer in good standing, you are already in compliance with much of the Canadian law.
How you already comply
Constant Contact's terms and conditions require that your list is permission-based, which means that you already comply with the unsolicited email requirements stated in the law:
- In order to upload your contacts, you agree that you have obtained the consent of each recipient before sending them email.
- Your email "From" address is verified and already accurately identifies you as the sender.
- You need to include a postal address in your email campaigns, and Constant Contact requires that you add a physical address before you can schedule an email. Just make sure that this address is a valid physical postal address for your organization.
- Constant Contact automatically includes a "SafeUnsubscribe®" link in every email footer for your contacts to opt-out of future email communications.
- Constant Contact automatically processes unsubscribes from your email communications.
How to stay compliant
- Turn on the Advanced Email Permissions setting so you can specify whether contacts you add to your account have given express or implied permission.
- Use the CASL template to request express permission from contacts who have only given you implied permission. You can search for the template when you create an email.
- Any unsubscribe requests that come to you via a reply to your email must be honored immediately by manually unsubscribing the contact.
- Unsubscribe requests never expire. You must honor all opt-out requests indefinitely, regardless of future mailing platforms, unless you receive a new explicit opt-in request for that address.
- Make sure that your email's subject line is straightforward. You can't advertise "Everything 50% off" in the subject and then only offer 25% off in your email. This is enticing the recipient to open the message under false pretenses and against the CASL law. Best practice is to be truthful and consistent in both the subject line and contents of your email.
- Email addresses obtained with implied permission must be removed after 2 years unless express permission to email them has been received. You can export an aged list to find the emails that need to be removed.
- Send a Reconfirm Opt-in email to have all your existing contacts confirm their interest in receiving your emails. Just keep in mind that contacts won’t be able to continue receiving emails from you until they click the confirmation link.
- Let your contacts decide which email lists they want to be on by utilizing the Update Profile Form.
- You must maintain an audit trail as to how and when you obtained consent. Best practice is to record as much information as possible on how consent was obtained. If challenged by regulators (or Canadian court) the burden of proof for consent is on the sender, not the recipient.
Learn more
As always, we will keep you posted on the continuing changes in the email marketing industry. If you have specific questions about your organization, we recommend that you contact your attorney. For more information, read Constant Contact's anti-spam policy and check out our additional CASL resources.
