The Whitelist

Are You Compliant With the New Canadian Anti-Spam Law?

If you’re already adhering to email marketing best practices, you are doing permission-based email marketing to an in-house email list. And your email marketing best practices likely are keeping you CAN-SPAM compliant, meaning you’re compliant with U.S. laws.

But what about the new Canadian anti-spam legislation? Are compliant with it? You probably should be, as there’s a chance you have Canadians on your in-house email list, whether you’re a B2C or B2B email marketer.

The Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam (FISA) bill is much more stringent than the American law. And it covers more than just email marketing. It also covers SMS, social media marketing and instant messages.

Other differences between the Canadian anti-spam legislation and the American CAN-SPAM act mean people can go after you for spamming them. Individual people, not just ISPs.

FISA is a also lot more about permission! Not the pseudo permission of some email marketers, but real permission. Where the American law stresses letting people opt out of getting emails from you, the Canadian law puts it on you in the first place to really have permission. And remember, this is about more than email marketing. This is all the other forms of online and wireless marketing too.

As with American law that requires your company be identified in your email marketing messages, FISA requires the same but more in requiring a person be identified as well as a way to contact them or some other real person…a way beyond the street address you’ll find in a CAN-SPAM compliant email.

If it seems intimidating, don’t worry. Adhering to email marketing best practices with integrity and consistency should by default already compliant with the new Canadian law. But if you’d like some help ensuring you’re compliant across the border, call on ClickMail.

Read a summary of the Canadian anti-spam law here.

ClickMail’s expertise is featured prominently in a story about problems with White House email communications by the Washington DC-based National Journal.  When the Journal needed an expert on email marketing and email best practices, the call went out to ClickMail CEO Marco Marini.

Read the full story here, as reproduced in the Journal’s blog on lobbying and advocacy, Under the Influence.

The following is definitely not an email best practice: Collecting business cards at an event, then adding all those names to your in-house email list. (Even if you haven’t done it, you know you’ve been a victim of it!)

That’s not opt in. It’s not even legal. But it’s so very tempting!
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According to a recent eMarketer article on email unsubscribes, only 5% of respondents said they never unsubscribe. That means 95% do! That’s something to think about if you work in email marketing.

And some subscribe quite often. The article states 55% of email subscribers in North America unsubscribe occasionally and 14% frequently. Again, another high number.
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One of the appeals email marketing has over other direct marketing methods is measurability. Send a postcard, and you haven’t any way to know how many recipients interacted with that piece of mail. Send an email, and you can measure opens, click throughs and more. Then you can use those numbers to adjust, optimize and improve your email marketing ROI. But you can also use those numbers with upper management to justify your budget and changes you’d like to make to your email marketing program, like hiring more staff, switching ESPs or even getting a promotion.
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Need to review how well you’re serving your permission-based email marketing list? See the new report from Merkle: “View from the Inbox™ 2009: Actionable Information for Marketers From the Annual Consumer Email Attitudes and Usage Study.”

The report reiterates that inboxes get more and more crowded and we must be aware of consumers’ attitudes about email to keep making the most of our email marketing ROI. But lest we get complacent and think we’re doing all right in the inbox—or choose ignorance and just hope for the best—this email marketing whitepaper is worth a read.
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Do you remember Dr. Seuss’ classic Green Eggs and Ham? In it, one of the characters parades through with signs declaring “I am Sam” and “Sam I am.” The grumpy character then calls him that: Sam I am: “That Sam-I-Am, that Sam-I-Am, I do not like that Sam-I-Am.”

As an email marketing vendor, we like to turn that into Spam-I-Am. And it’s a wonder to us how many email marketers don’t realize that—in the eyes of the consumer—spam is exactly what they are.
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As further follow up to ExactTarget’s email deliverability webinar last week, ‘Getting to the Inbox: Why “Send” Is Not the End and Reputation Is King,’ let’s talk opt in.

As the webinar pointed out and we covered in our last email marketing blog post, email delivery is a huge concern among email marketers, and reputation is the key to deliverability.
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Here’s an email marketing challenge for you: Today, think of three ways to grow your in-house email list that are unusual, but still fall under the realm of permission-based email marketing . You know to use Forward to a Friend, you ask people for email addresses at trade shows, you have a prominent email signup link on your web site…but there are so many other ways to promote your email program and get people signed up.
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When it comes to email lists, quality wins over quantity. A smaller, permission-based email marketing list can produce much better results. The key is slowly building that quality list over time. As promised on Monday, here are six more tips for growing your in-house email list:
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