The Canadian Anti-Spam legislation came into effect on July 1st 2014.

Even if you aren’t in Canada, the law affects your business if you have people accessing their emails in Canada.

If you have any questions about how it can affect your business, we’ve got the answer in our latest publication: “CASL: A guide to understanding Canada’s New Anti-Spam Legislation”, now available.

Topics covered

Permission

The primary focus of the law is Consent. CASL requires that you be able to prove that you have obtained consent from your contacts, by either asking them (and keeping proof that they said “yes”), or through an existing relationship. Examples of consent are listed on page 9 of the guide.

Coming into force

The Canadian Anti-Spam legislation came into effect on July 1st 2014. At this point, you must comply to all the requirements of CASL, or risk the penalties (listed on page 16 of the guide)

Transitional period

You have until July 1st, 2017 to obtain express consent from existing contacts on your list – one of the recommendations you’ll find on page 14 of the guide is to use the time to send out a reconfirmation campaign.

Private right of action

On July 1st, 2017, a Private right of action will be enacted, which differs from the US where the only penalties are fines (more information on the differences between CAN-SPAM and CASL can be found on page 8 of the guide).

For more information

More information on the law can be found in our whitepaper: “CASL: A guide to understanding Canada’s New Anti-Spam Legislation”

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Note: Most email marketing service providers, like CakeMail, have already taken all the steps necessary to ensure you comply with international anti-spam laws and in many cases, their terms of use go above and beyond the requirements of the law. At all times, you must comply to the terms of use of the email marketing service provider you choose and to the anti-spam legislation that applies to you.