CASL and How It Affects Email Marketing to Canadians

On July 1st, Canada enacted the Canada Anti-Spam Law, otherwise known as CASL. If you’re emailing marketing messages to Canadian residents, you’ll need to comply with CASL. Luckily, there’s a three-year transition period, but since many of our clients are asking about this new mandate, we’d like to give you some helpful information.

Here’s CASL in a nutshell: if your business connects with residents in Canada through a digital messaging channel (like emails), you can do so – but only with their consent (either expressed or implied). Failure to comply can result in huge fines. (No one wants that.)

It doesn’t matter where your business is located. If you’re targeting someone in Canada with a commercial electronic message (i.e email, but that’s not all) CASL applies to you.

As mentioned, email marketing is probably the first thing that comes to mind when it comes to what channel is effected by CASL. But CASL is different than CAN-SPAM (the US anti-spam law) in that it also applies to social platforms like Facebook and Twitter, too. CASL even goes as far as setting guidelines for SMS marketing as well.

CASL is a sweeping change for companies that market to Canadians. So big, in fact, that some researchers are actually speculating CASL’s policies may lead to an increase in direct mail marketing since the potential for fines loom large.

To help you navigate through CASL, we’ve put together a helpful list of resources below. As always, feel to contact us if you would like to discuss how your digital marketing programs could be affected by CASL.

Here’s an infographic on the matter to think about when sending messages to Canada:

And another infographic comparing CASL to CAN-SPAM:

Other Useful Links:
Here’s where you can learn more about CASL, straight from CASL’s authors.

Detailed information and resources from our friends at Listrak.

The ANA’s A Digital Marketer’s Guide to CASL.