Are you ready?
CASL offenders risk criminal & civil charges, ... and penalties up to $10 million.
In July of 2014, the Canadian government introduced the Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation, commonly known as CASL, which was far and away the most aggressive legislative move to combat spam in the world. CASL shifted the burden of including an "opt out" mechanism with all marketing emails (CANSPAM ACT 2013), to an "Opt in" requirement (CASL 2014), with offenders facing unprecedented fines.
CASL was introduced in three phases, and came into force by the following schedule:
Back in 2014, the main guiding principles of CASL were that you had to acquire "explicit" permission from the recipients, which included a double opt-in process, or you'd have to have "implied" permission to send them email.
Organizations that don’t comply risk serious penalties, including criminal charges, civil charges, and personal liability for company officers and directors, and penalties up to $10 million.
Implied permissions was generally governed by whether you had done business with the recipients in the previous 12-months, or had an ongoing history of communication with them. The explicit/implicit permission rules were admittedly nebulous, but they were meant to provide a manageable transition period whereby businesses could gradually acquire "explicit" permission from members of the distribution list over a three year period - which will soon expire in a matter of months.
PENALTIES FOR NONCOMPLIANCE
Yes, the three year transition period is now down to the last six months, and most Canadian businesses are woefully unprepared for the last stage of CASL to go into effect on July 1st of 2017. Organizations that don’t comply risk serious penalties, including criminal charges, civil charges, and personal liability for company officers and directors, and penalties up to $10 million.
WHAT CAN CANADIAN BUSINESSES DO TO PREPARE FOR CASL
Yes, these penalties are severe, but you can take steps to ensure your business is in compliance, and minimize your risk of fines. While the steps each organization must take to comply may differ, Canadian businesses should do the following to prepare for CASL:
In other words, have a CRM, have an emarketing service, and have a plan in place for your business.
If you’re reading this post, you likely have Act! as your CRM already, and you are no doubt familiar with Swiftpage's Act! Emarketing service - which puts you in pretty good shape for two of the three required steps. The third step, however, is a bit trickier. It involves developing a plan to acquire opt-in consent from hundreds, if not thousands of your contacts; have these consents gathered in a CASL compliant manner; and have them recorded in your Act! database well enough to stand-up to legal scrutiny.
These are not easy tasks, especially when you consider most small businesses in Canada cannot afford a team of cold-callers or data entry clerks to manage this process, much less quickly, and perhaps on an open-ended basis.
No, for this "plan" to be effective, it must be quick, easy, and economical, which is why we're so pleased to introduce our exclusive "Act4CASL" program - a unique application and online service that painlessly integrates with Act! to automate the CASL compliance process.
SO WHAT IS “ACT4CASL”?
Act4CASL is an application & online service, developed by Keystroke, that delivers emailed opt-in requests, records your contact's responses in an online database, and then syncs those responses back to your Act! database at the click of a button.
Once your Act! database is updated to reflect your contact’s opt-in permissions, you can create your new marketing groups within Act! that incorporates this consent, and be confident you’ve exercised reasonable due diligence in complying with CASL. It takes only a couple of minutes to setup, and even novice Act! users can do it themselves. No HTML, merge mail, or Outlook experience required! Most importantly, though, is it's available in early January 2017, leaving Act4CASL subscribers almost six months to get their business ready for the last stage of CASL to be implemented.
Act4CASL setup steps are as follows:
It’s that simple, and Act4CASL costs only $200USD per year, with only one subscription necessary per database, regardless of the number of users your business has.
WATCH OUR VIDEO ON "ACT4CASL"
PRIVACY POLICY
Act4CASL protects your contact's privacy, as well. Only their contact's unique Act! GUID (a 25 character database aphanumeric ID) is stored on Act4CASL.com for purposes of synchronization. All contact info like names and emails are removed from our servers after the first response results are synched to your database.
WE'RE DEVELOPERS, NOT LAWYERS
Please note, Keystroke is not qualified to offer legal advice, so each person is responsible for ascertaining their own CASL compliance requirements (please review www.fightspam.gc.ca to learn more).
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS & PURCHASE DETAILS
If you have any questions relating to our Act4CASL, please email us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call our toll free number at 800-857-0558 and we'd be happy to answer your questions. Learn more at http://www.keystroke.ca/act4-products/act4casl.
Specializing in CRM software for small to medium sized businesses, through expert counsel, deployment, hosting, support, and development services.
Delivering fruitful CRM solutions since 1994, Keystroke is the #1 Act! Reseller in the World and Master Act! Distributor for Canada.
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