It’s likely that you’ve received one, if not several, of those ‘opt in to keep receiving e-mails from us’ notifications this week. These e-mail signal the July 1 start date of the CRTC’s anti-spam law (CASL).
The law changes the way businesses can communicate with their customers, making it necessary to get express consent to send e-mails and other marketing messages. For more on implied versus express consent, read this.
So what does the new express consent requirement mean for small businesses who have cultivated e-mail marketing lists over the years and are now worried about losing those contacts? The good news is there’s a grace period for getting consent – as long as you’ve communicated with the customer prior to July 1st, 2014, you have three years to convert them to express consent. If you get implied consent after July 1, 2014, you have two years to convert to express consent, but that’s still a good chunk of time to get your lists on board.
So while there is an initial rush to be up to code by July 1, the truth is that if you’ve been playing by the rules all along, there is not much that needs to change.
Often the most expensive part of tracking e-mail marketing consent is managing the database, since with express consent you need to keep a record as to who said you can send them e-mail updates. If you have a small number of e-mail subscribers (fewer than 2,000) you can use software to manage your lists for free, but once you grow beyond that threshold the monthly fees can add up.
Here are four cost-effective ways of managing your customer’s data that keeps you compliant with CASL.
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