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Builder takes CASL: check mates

by StevePublished 02 May 2014

There are two main components about Canada’s Anti Spam Legislation (herein “CASL”) relevant to clients of MNB (herein “Builder”).

The Builder is already compliant with the functional aspects of CASL:

  • The Builder identifies you as the sender and us as the “behalf”
  • The Builder footers provide your address, website, and optionally your phone number
  • The Builder provides an easy unsubscribe

The issue that you, our client, need to resolve is whether or not you have:

  1. Subscribers in Canada
  2. Permission to email them (expressed or implied)

Express permission is like someone completing your sign-up form. There are some requirements for gaining express permission:

  • If you use a check-box on other forms to gain permission to send emails, it MUST NOT default to checked
  • You need to clearly set the expectations - content at a minimum but I also recommend frequency - of the emails/newsletters
  • You need to provide 1) your name, 2) physical address, and 3) either phone number or email address for contact purposes
  • You will need to keep these records around for(ever) the lifetime of the subscriber

Implied permission is like taking someone with whom you have been doing business AND putting them onto your email marketing list. There are two significant identifications you have implied consent:

  1. Your “doing business” with the person is within the last 24 months
  2. If the email you send is directly related to the professional role of the recipient AND that recipient has given you their email address (or has it plastered on the web) AND has not yet told you not to email them (yes, that is a mouthful)

There are all sorts of caveats, clarifications, and information readings at the Justice Laws Website (full HTML text of CASL).

If you don’t know whether or not you have addresses based in Canada, you can use a data augmentation service (like towerdata.com) to identify the where-abouts of your subscribers and then take appropriate action. If you need help with this, don’t hesitate to contact us directly.