As of July 1st, 2014, the new Canadian Anti-Spam Regulations will come into effect. The Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) is a law to protect Canadians while ensuring that businesses can continue to compete in the global marketplace. With this new legislation, all Canadian businesses will need to obtain consent prior to sending any electronic messages. Failure to comply with this new legislation could result in extreme penalties.

Please CLICK HERE to read about CASL and what you need to do in order to comply with the new regulations.

A lot has been written lately about Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL). You have probably also received many e-mail messages from various companies claiming that they need your consent before July 1st, 2014 to be able to continue to send your their e-mail newsletters, product information, etc... These consent requests are misleading. The fact is, is that if you have been receiving these types of messages before July 1st 2014, they can continue to send them to you after July 1st 2014. They just can’t send them indefinitely. Under CASL, e-mail marketers have 3 years from July 1st 2014 to obtain express consent to continue to send you those types of messages. One catch here is that they must have been sending you messages prior to that date. So just don’t panic, slow down and take a breather.

After July 1st 2014, things get a little trickier.....you will have to determine the nature of your relationship with the recipient. This will help you determine if:

• you are allowed to send them e-mails at all, or
• you have implied consent for 24 months, or
• you have implied consent for 6 months, or preferably
• you have express consent to send the e-mails indefinitely.

• When and how recipients are added to your e-mail list
• Their level of consent
• Express
• Implied for 6 months
• Implied for 24 months
• Implied for 36 months (for recipients prior to July 1st, 2014)
• Whether or not they have withdrawn their support
• If they subscribed via a web-form, their IP address

The thing that is going to make CASL a burden on business is the expiration of consent. For the small business owner sending out their monthly newsletter via Outlook, this is going to be a nightmare. For every recipient, they will need to keep track of when their consent expires and try to convert them into ‘Express’ consent before that date.

This is where iMambo comes in. Our system will:

• track all of these consent levels and expiry dates for you
• The system logs all communication with that recipient so that if they ever made a CASL complaint, you can show them (and the CRTC), when and how they were signed up on your list
• You will even be able to schedule consent e-mails to be sent out periodically prior to a recipient address expiring
• If you have a newsletter list, you can send out a consent request message to that list, and you don’t have to worry about recipients receiving it twice if they have already consented. It will only go to recipients who have not yet given express consent.