Tellem Email Marketing system, hosted on compliant Canadian-based servers in Toronto, Ontario, wants to help you stay CASL compliant with your customers.
This article from Deloitte.com does a good job of highlighting the main points:
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"As of July 1, 2014, CASL will require businesses to obtain either express “opt-in” or implied consent to send commercial electronic messages (CEMs), including emails and certain types of social media messages. Pre-toggled or pre-checked in boxes will not be allowed. In addition, all electronic marketing messages will need to clearly and prominently identify the sender, include the sender’s contact information and provide an unsubscribe mechanism, unless fully exempted from the Act.
Serious penalties
Organizations that don’t comply with CASL risk serious penalties, including criminal charges, civil charges, personal liability for company officers and directors, and penalties up to $10 million.
CASL will be enforced in three stages:
- The anti-spam provisions will take effect on July 1, 2014, giving businesses mere months to inventory their electronic marketing practices, align these practices with CASL and implement changes to their business processes and CRM systems
- The provisions relating to the unsolicited installation of computer programs or software will come into force on January 15, 2015
- The private right of action will be enforced as of July 1, 2017
Transitional period
Businesses have a three year grace period after July 1, 2014 to verify and confirm consent to send Commercial Electronic Messages, but can still only communicate with recipients with whom they have an existing business relationship.
Fortunately, any express consents you get before CASL comes into force will be recognized as compliant with CASL.
Given the looming deadline, it is essential for businesses to assess their CASL readiness and develop a compliance strategy."
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You can use Tellem Email Marketing to clean up your old subscriber lists by sending existing subscribers an email campaign asking them to stay connected with you and to resubscribe to your sending list. There is no way around this. Each email recipient will receive a double opt-in confirmation link notice in their inbox otherwise they will not be added to your new list.
You can also add a webform for all future, new customers to your website that will force a double opt-in confirmation process to confirm their email address. Tellem will log the email signup for you in your new subscriber list. Use your new cleaned up list for future sending and DON'T revert to using old email addresses or you run the risk of getting penalized by the new laws in effect.
If you're the self sufficient type, use the instructions below or pass the details to your web programmer to give you a hand.
How to generate embed code for CASL signup form for your webpage:
- Log Into Your Tellem Account.
- Click on the Subscribers Tab along the top.
- Next, create a new list (call it "CASL Compliant Contacts") or something like that. This is where email addresses for the subscribers that say YES to your CASL email campaign later on will end up. This is your "clean" list that you'll want to send to in the future and NOT any of your old email lists that haven't been confirmed.
- Once you create your new list, click on the Webform link to the right of this new list. This will take you to a Webform page specific for this list.
- On the Webform page, you will be able to generate the embed code. Paste this code into the HTML of your preferred webpage anywhere on your website where you want to see the signup code to show up. To generate the code, simply scroll to the bottom of the page, and click on the Generate Code button (by default it will ask for email address) but you can customize if you want to collect more fields.
- If you had a web programmer embed the code for you, have them send you a URL link to where the new signup form is located.
Test your new signup form!
- To ensure your new signup form is working, go to your webpage, and enter a valid email address you own, and click the Subscribe button.
- The Tellem system will send you a Double Opt-in Confirmation email to the email address you used. Check your inbox and click on the confirmation link.
- Go to your Tellem account, and View the details of your new subscriber list. You will see the email used to test the form as part of your list now.
We're almost done...
- With your form setup and tested, you can now send out your own CASL email campaign to your OLD LIST to encourage them to confirm their desire to continue to hear from you. This will clean up your old email list. If they don't resubmit their email address, you won't run the risk of penalties.
- There is a pre-written template ready and waiting for you under the Announcements category that you can customize and send to your old list.
- For Corporate or Network customers, your gallery of brand specific templates will have a CASL template you can send out.
- NOTE -- make sure you add a link to your new webpage/new signup form inside the email campaign you are sending out. If you don't, people on your email list won't know how to resubmit their email address!
Don't hesitate to email our Help Desk Team if you have any questions...we're here to help.
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