This legislation will help reduce unwanted emails from appearing in consumers’ inboxes by requiring companies to gain their consent.
If you run a home-based or small business and if you use the Internet, mobile devices or social media to promote your products, services or business you need to know how this legislation impacts your email marketing campaigns.
If you are sending a commercial electronic message (CEM) to an electronic address, then you need to comply with three requirements.
Does your mailing list comply?
You need to:
- obtain consent
- provide identification information
- provide an unsubscribe mechanism
Have you obtained consent?
If you’re using MailChimp it’s easy to comply. MailChimp requires that you identify yourself and automatically includes an unsubscribe mechanism. So the only issue that we need worry about is consent.
If your site uses a subscription widget and all your subscribers opted in by using that form, then you’re in compliance.
However, if you’ve imported a list or added contacts directly into MailChimp, we suggest that before July 1st 2014 you send an email to your mailing list seeking expressed consent.
If you’re not using MailChimp or another newsletter subscription service you can read more here to get started.
And while we’re on the topic…. you can subscribe to our mailing list. You can choose to be notified about upcoming WordPress workshops in Toronto, receive our blog posts by email, or both.
Need to know more?
For more information check out: The Canadian Government’s site to Fight Spam
