How CASL spam law compliance should affect your website, newsletter, database, and marketing efforts

Canada’s anti-spam legislation (CASL) took place in July 2014 and the penalties are severe. This article will focus on digital marketing responsibilities for small business web sites that send out newsletters or email to any persons residing in Canada.

Your website forms – In order to be CASL compliant, subscribe forms must do a few things.

• Do not use a pre-checked checkbox to obtain consent when adding a user to your mailing list.
• Collect the country on subscribe forms so you know where each user is located as laws pertaining to their geographic location may affect your marketing communications.
• You must define who will be sending email, the type of content that will be sent and text stating how the user can opt-out.
• Include your full mailing address on the page.

Your website database – In order to be CASL compliant, you must collect some user information and store the data in your database.

• The date / time of consent.
• The specific web page where the user gave consent.
• The IP address of the user
• The type of consent – implied or express.
• The expiration date of implied consent.

Your Newsletters – In order to be CASL compliant, you must collect provide the user a few things.

• Physical address should be contained within the newsletter.
• A working opt-out feature needs to be provided to the user.

Do you have this issue with your website or want to discover other issues your website may have? Request a website audit now; it’s completely FREE!