Canada takes a tough stand on email marketing, introduces CASL

Mike Connolly, June 17, 2014

Just when businesses were getting comfortable with automated email marketing, automated social media posts, sending an email on the latest offers to random database, here is something to shake things up. [tweetable]Come July 1, 2014, you will be restricted from sending commercial electronic messages (CEM)[/tweetable] to your prospects and customers too.  Even updated database, which had just gone through email appending process, will face difficulties in reaching the target audience.

Yes, that’s right. The Government of Canada takes a tough stand and introduces the Canadian anti-spam legislation (CASL). This law will come into force making it even more difficult to reach out to the inbox of your prospects through any electronic medium with a commercial message. According to this legislation, if you want to connect with your prospect, you can do so, only if you have their consent. The irony is that, after July 1, 2014, sending an email to your prospects on seeking their consent will also be considered a CEM and it will be banned.

So what is a CEM according to CASL?

A CEM is defined as a digital message sent to any electronic address (i.e. email address, social media account, text message) that promotes or advertises a product, person, event, investment, or business. In more general terms, if there is any commercial activity tied to the message, it would be considered a CEM under CASL.

The CASL is extremely strict, but instead of dreading the change Businesses can come up with innovative ways of selling to their prospects without even using any commercial terms. However, an intelligent intervention into tackling this legislation is important. We will discuss more of CASL in our next post.