Three Misconceptions About Canada’s New Antispam Rules (CASL)

Are you CASL compliant yet? The federal government recently announced that most regulations for Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL for short) came into effect on July 1st, 2014.

The remaining regulations for CASL are not supposed to be effective until 2017. However, it is said that the majority of small Canadian businesses are not prepared to handle the CASL regulations.

Many businesses are taking little to no action when it comes to CASL compliance. However, CASL holds severe consequences for those that neglect compliance. Fines up to $1 million for individuals, and $10 million for organizations can be given to those who are caught violating CASL regulations.

Many companies are unaware of the implications of the CASL regulations. Here is a look at some of the most common misconceptions associated with CASL.

• I have three years before I need to worry about CASL regulations

Any new customers that are entered into your system after July 1^st are by law, required to have explicit consent before you can send them electronic communications. So while you may not have to worry about obtaining explicit consent for customers entered prior to July 1^st, you still have to alter your practices for new customers.

So, even though you don’t have to worry about existing customers right this second – it’s wiser to get it out of the way before 2017 in order to ensure success.

2. When our company updates to the CRM/POS system we will be able to manage explicit consent

This is a problem because waiting for technology upgrades may backfire in the end. Many of the CRM/POS systems are unable to manage explicit consent. They may have opt-in/out fields, but they aren’t able to manage the dynamics of constant opting-in and opting-out when customers change their minds.

3. Capturing explicit consent will take too long

On the contrary, there are actually many platforms right now that work separately from your central system to gather explicit consent. These platforms then send the data back to your current system. Additionally, they don’t only manage email, but phone and text as well.

These platforms will allow you to multi-task receiving explicit consent from your new customers, while you work at gaining consent from pre-July customers.

Don’t wait for July 2017 to come, get CASL compliant today in order to stay ahead of the competition and steer clear of CASL consequences. In most cases, only minor changes need to be made to existing strategies.

For more information on CASL compliance and explicit consent, please contact our company at (604) 986-8170 , or send us an email at info@compunet.ca. Let our team assist your business in developing marketing campaigns that are CASL compliant. 

Author: Joe Martin, Date: 2014-08-18