Many businesses are unprepared for CASL. Are you one of them?

Canada's anti-spam law (CASL) comes into effect on Canada Day. After July 1st, you will no longer be able to communicate electronically with people who have not given you permission to do so. Even sending an email to ask for permission will be illegal under the new legislation.

What's Covered?

CASL covers all types of electronic communication sent to a Canadian or accessed from a computer in Canada, if the intent behind that message is to encourage commercial activity. That covers pretty much every communication you have during your work day, except telephone calls and old fashioned snail mail.

Think about how much of your regular communication is either a text, and instant message, an email or social media message. Any one of those could get you into hot water with the CRTC if done improperly.

Many Businesses Are Unprepared

Since January of this year, I have delivered over a dozen CASL workshops for business organizations in BC. At every event, about half the room is unaware of how invasive this law will be or the extent of the personal and professional liability it creates for business owners.

Many of the routine activities we engage in as business professionals must change.

• How you accept referrals from your partners or extend referrals (leads!) to your VARs may need to change.
• The way your sales team uses email as part of their contact strategy for target accounts and cold leads will need to change.
• The content of your transactional emails - receipts from your online store or abandoned shopping cart follow ups - should be reviewed and adjusted.
• Your email signatures may need to change.
• Your marketing email templates may also need to change.
• The way you share data between your sales/CRM, accounting and marketing systems may not be sufficient to keep your lists clean.
• Your social media policy needs to be updated to ensure that staff guidelines protect you against a CASL breach.
• Your email marketing and opt in collection practises may need to change.
• Your privacy policy should be reviewed, and adjusted as necessary.

When you reviewed CASL, did you consider all of these things? If you haven't yet taken decisive action to ensure your compliance, chances are you're at risk of breaking the law.

What to do?

Fortunately, there are many resources available to help you. Here are a few links to get you started:

• FInd out more about CASL on the Kinetix Media blog
• Download this free CASL toolkit to help you get started.
• Check out the official source of information at fightspam.gc.ca.