Are you the owner or the director of an American small business? Would you like to communicate by email with clients, or potential clients north of the border? If so, the following is for you.
Canada’s Anti Spam Legislation (CASL) requires you to get consent from your contacts in order to communicate with them within the law. There are three types of consents you should know about:
Express Consent
You receive consent in writing, or by double opt-in (it lasts a lifetime, or until the person retrieves their consent by unsubscribing).
Implied Consent Type 1
You automatically get this type of consent when someone asks for a quote. The consent lasts for a period of 6 months (make sure to take advantage of it and ask for their implied consent during that time frame.)
Implied Consent Type 2
You automatically receive this type of consent when a client makes a purchase or pays for a service. It lasts for a period of 24 months and renews every time a new transaction is made – for example someone who buys their supply of dog food every month at a specialty pet store. It’s great to get repeat transactions, but it’s always best to get their express consent to avoid any issues.
No matter which consent you have, you must respect certain obligations:
- Every email you send must contain a functioning unsubscribe link.
- Every email must contain two of the following elements; the company name, its physical address, its phone number or a valid email address.
Why American businesses should use a Canadian email marketing solution like Cyberimpact to email their Canadian clients and contacts?
CASL protects client information in a way that differs from American laws. Therefore, it is ideal to store the personal information of your Canadian contacts on Canadian web servers.
Since you must be able to provide proof of consent at any time, a tool like Cyberimpact takes care of storing and organizing everything for you in a CASL compliant way, facilitating this task.
The fact that your emails are sent by reputable servers located in Canada improves your chances of inbox delivery, in turn giving you a higher open rate.
The fees are in Canadian dollars, which means savings of nearly 25%.
Two official languages are used in Canada (75% English, 25% French). Canadians are proud of their mother tongue, and strongly prefer being addressed in their preferred language. With Cyberimpact, footers, subscription forms and unsubscribe links, are all available in both official languages.
In conclusion, email marketing has proven to be very effective and you would benefit from using it to communicate with your Canadian clients and contacts. But make sure to know the ins and outs of CASL, and additionally, use a Canadian solution equipped with all the tools to make compliance easier.