You may have heard the buzz, Canada is creating its first Anti SPAM law. Unlike the CAN SPAM we’re used to which only covers email, Canada’s Anti Spam Legislation aka CASL covers Commercial Electronic Messages (CEM):

• Email
• SMS
• Instant Messages
• Social Media postings such as ‘tweets’
• Some voice communications

Our advice? Prepare now!

While a few of the requirements of this law may sound familiar, others on the list will definitely require your attention and careful planning. Here are a few notable requirements of CEM:

• Express affirmative (opt in) consent
• No false or misleading headers, including sender and subject line
• Cannot alter transmission data
• Must provide a conspicuous unsubscribe mechanism
• Must include postal address of sender
• Cannot perform address harvesting to obtain email addresses or send to harvested addresses
• Liability for entities who knowingly allow spam to be sent on their behalf, even if the message was not directly initiated by those entities

After reviewing CASL, it’s definitely clear that Canadians indeed, “Do not like SPAM!”

Don’t get caught by surprise. Prepare now for the new Canadian Anti SPAM Legislation. The new laws go into effect on July 1, 2014. Would you like to avoid the $10 million dollar penalty per violation? We thought you might.

Here are several steps you can take to get prepared:

1. Scrub your Canadian contacts in Eloqua to obtain an affirmative opt-in to receive your email and Commercial Electronic Message (CEM). You can expect your Canadian contact lists to decrease in size due to this process.
2. Update your forms from the opt-out (pre-checked) method to the opt-in (unchecked) method
3. Update your Privacy Policies to ensure proper consent

Would you like to know more of what CASL means to your business? Do you need help implementing these steps? We would be happy to evaluate your current Canadian contacts and offer solutions to assist in your preparation for Canada’s new legislation. Feel free to contact us, but please no spam. 😉

Read what Eloqua says about the new legislation.