After years of denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, it’s time to step up and figure out what we can and can’t do with email, social and mobile interactions, now that Bill C-28 is on our doorsteps. Also known as Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation or CASL, this bundle of joy comes into effect on July 1st.
If you are just now realizing that you have no idea what this bill means, how the heck you’re going to comply and what to do next, cheer up. You have four and a half months to work it out.
May I suggest you start with the Canadian Marketing Association? That’s what I did a couple of weeks ago. I think the recording of the session is now online, so if you’re a CMA member, I strongly recommend you put aside a few hours and listen in. It’s a long slog through dense woods, but worth the time and you will discover, as I did, that there are a bunch of good side effects of CASL. Plus they had juice and cookies at the live session.
- Sales has to enter and tag their leads. For real. CASL will require us to be able to show where you got that email address and what we have sent and when and in what context. The way to do that is with our contact management software, and the way that happens is our Sales Squirrels finally stop tracking their activities with sticky notes and bingo dabbers and start using that posh tool we gave them.
- You have an excuse to clean out your prospect list. You know it’s full of crappy leads and missing information. Time to get rid of that stuff and all those invalid email addresses.
- You can finally justify the cost and efficiency of a Sender Policy Framework and DMARC technology. If you don’t know what this is, click here. I you don’t know why you need it, note that Twitter discovered 300 internal servers that were merrily firing email out to subscribers without anyone much noticing. You should do this because it will reduce phishing attacks and give your Productivity Prevention Department something to do in the second quarter.
- It’s a great excuse to send a nice note to your customers and have them give you express consent to send stuff and, while they’re at it, visit your preference centre to let you know what content they would like.
- You will finally do something about your dreadful Contact Us page. No more managing pre-checked options and remembering to check your unsubscribe links. Could I suggest you stick in a toll-free number, a live chat and an email account that someone actually looks at?
- Your co-op student will have lots to do sorting out explicit, implied, third party, unknown and missing consent in your customer and prospect records.
- You can use this information to build a lovely RFM (recency, frequency, monetary) model of your base, since you’re in the neighbourhood anyway. Don’t know about RFM? It’s a golden oldie that still works.
- The Hand-Wringers in your legal department will finally accept your lunch invitation. You’ll want to make sure they have a good plan in place in case you screw up your compliance since the fines look like lottery jackpots in Florida, there’s a lot to be incredibly nervous about.
- You can finally deal with some of your rogue and hobby marketers. You know, those folks with inexplicable access to both customer lists and email, who commit random acts of marketing or begin publishing newsletters for no reason. Before it was stupid and inconvenient. Now it’s illegal. That’s good.
- You can start developing non-commercial content and not feel guilty about it. That’s right! If you have research, videos, presentations and other things that are actually helpful and educational and not thinly disguised sales pitches, you are able to share them much more easily than dirty old solicitations. When your Sales Squirrels wonder why you’re doing it, you just wrap that big old compliance flag around yourself and stare indignantly back.
- You get to have a long, long talk with your direct agency and the mail houses they use. No more ugly, repurposed email templates with unsubscribe links that don’t work. CASL is a great excuse to make them redo your templates from scratch and test and test and test them. You can also (and probably should) revisit your contracts with your suppliers to make sure they’re compliant. You may find some of your American agencies are completely in the dark about C-28. While you’re at it, you can discuss all those little things that have been bugging you. Like your account team, the billing rate, the lack of hockey tickets and other vexing agency things.
- You will finally know why people unsubscribe from your content. If you build a good preference centre (and now is the time to start), you can offer tons of choice at a granular enough level that you might actually learn something. For example, instead of asking just a yes/no question about getting your helpful newsletter, you can ask customers whether they want updates daily, weekly or less often. Instead of asking whether they want product information, you can ask which types of products they are interested in learning about. The more specific the consent, the more compliant and the more effective you’re going to be. This post from Smart Insights is a great primer on preference centres.
Here are some other helpful links if you need them:
- Official Government of Canada CASL Fan Site
- InBox Marketer has this helpful FAQ to get you started
- Emailkarma.net is a hangout for ethical marketers and has tons of good stuff on CASL
- Davis LLP has this excellent resource page
- Canadian Marketing E-Law has very in-depth resources around C-28, PIPEDA and other acronyms, if you’re really cramming.
Related Posts
How to be The Sally Field of B2B Email
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BizMarketer is Elizabeth Williams
You can reach me at escwilliams@gmail.com
or follow me on Twitter @bizmkter
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