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.

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

That’s not opt in. It’s not even legal. But it’s so very tempting!

But there are plenty of ways to collect email addresses from people that do want to opt in. You might not get the same quantity as the fishbowl at the trade show, but the quality will far surpass those names. And when it comes to in-house email lists, quality beats quantity every time…especially when it means your behavior is legal.

As an email marketing vendor, we’ve seen our email marketing clients use all kinds of different methods for collecting permission-based email addresses that can improve their email marketing results. Here are a few of our favorites, some obvious but maybe overlooked, some not so obvious but a good idea:

• Email signature blocks: Every employee in your company should have a standard, branded email signature that includes a link to your signup page. (Note: Every employee should have a standard, branded email signature even if it doesn’t include a link to your signup page!)
• Facebook: Include a link to your signup page on your company’s Fan page.
• Direct mail: Sure it’s offline, but there’s no reason you can’t encourage people to go online and subscribe. Try using an incentive, like a discount if they do.
• Trade shows: Yes, we were just mocking companies that collect email addresses en masse at trade shows via business cards, but you can legitimately get people to opt in. You can even eliminate the data entry (and possible errors of) by letting people sign up right there on a computer at your booth. This is another great place for an incentive, something you’ll give them right then and there after they do subscribe.
• Landing pages: Include a link to your signup page on any landing pages used with pay-per-click ads or other offers. Even if they don’t convert once at the landing page, they might still say yes to hearing from you in the future by subscribing to your email marketing or email newsletter.

Even if you only get a handful of email addresses via each different method, over time, those handfuls will add up to big numbers. This is where quantity does matter: The more places and ways you can get people to opt in to your email marketing, the faster your in-house email list will grow with quality names!

And remember in each case that people won’t subscribe just because you offer the option. You still have to sell the benefits of signing up in the first place!

And some subscribe quite often. The article states 55% of email subscribers in North America unsubscribe occasionally and 14% frequently. Again, another high number.

We as an email solutions provider are tossing these numbers at you for a few reasons, all of which involve improving your email marketing results. Lessons to remember here are:

• Your email marketing content must be relevant to the subscriber. Most unsubscribes are due to irrelevant email marketing content
• Your email marketing must show up in people’s inboxes with a frequency that works for them, not you. Email too often, and they’ll unsubscribe. Email too rarely, and they’ll forget the subscribed in the first place
• Your email marketing must pass the “annoyance” test so you don’t get reported as spam. Many people will report an email as spam rather than unsubscribe when they think your email marketing is irrelevant, too frequent, or both
• Your email marketing must remind people that they did subscribe and asked to hear from you. Use welcome emails to do this, and include a brief line in each email reminding them they subscribed

Also note that these numbers are for permission-based email marketing, meaning these folks subscribed to the emails in the first place.

As an email solutions provider, we’ve noticed a lack of knowledge about how to effectively use metrics. Often email marketers don’t know what to measure, don’t understand the variances, or don’t know how to capture and use that knowledge. And that means email marketers are missing out on chances to measure, improve and even justify their email marketing programs. That’s why we’re excited to have our own Michael Kelly, Director of Business Development at ClickMail Marketing, presenting on that very topic next week.

On Wednesday, May 6th, at the seventh annual Silverpop Client Summit, Michael will teach email marketers how to prove their worth using metrics. He’ll address what should be measured, how the email marketing industry is standardizing on measurement, and how to use your results. Michael will show real-life examples of how to pull meaningful, actionable analytics automatically, analytics that matter to you as the marketer, and upper management as the purse strings.

Among other timely topics, Michael will cover:

• Conflicting metrics
• Other ways to measure
• The danger in not measuring the right numbers, or measuring inaccurately
• Why measure
• What to measure as well as what not to measure
• How to recognize trends you can act on
• Tools to help you do the job

See the agenda for the Silverpop conference click here.

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.

As usual, relevance is a major point. To quote the report: “The biggest reasons subscribers choose to opt-out of permission email continue to be lack of relevance (cited by 75%), followed closely by sending too frequently (73%).”

Irrelevant content and too frequent sending. Can we just name these the two big email marketing sins? Content that matters to you, not the recipient, and emails that show up too often are two key indicators that you’re not respecting your in-house email list. When people hand over their email address to sign up to hear from you, it’s a vote of confidence, a sign of trust. We email marketers simply must accept and respect that. We must treat our subscribers with care, and make sure our email marketing serves their needs as well as ours.

As the report goes on to say, “Marketers expecting sustained engagement from their lists not only need desirable content, they need to compete within an already crowded inbox.” (Italics ours) And a reasonable conclusion to draw from this statement is that “desirable content” is one way you compete in a crowded mailbox.

Despite consumers’ frustration with irrelevant, too-frequent content, the report says 58% still believe email is a great way for companies to stay in touch with customers. It’s our responsibility as an email marketing vendor, and yours as an email marketer, to make sure that number doesn’t decrease. And we do that by being respectful of subscribers, sending content they want at a rate they want.

Need some help evaluating your email marketing program to see where you can make improvements? We’re happy to help. Contact us at blog@clickmailmarketing.com.

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.

Yet very few email marketing folk would ever say, “Yes, I am Spam.” (Or Spam-I-Am, in keeping with our Dr. Seuss flavor here.) Meanwhile, the people getting their emails are reporting them as spam, even the permission-based emails going to folks who signed up to hear from these companies.

How can this be? It can because Spam is in the eyes of the beholder. To a consumer, spam pretty much means any email they didn’t want to get.

According to the November 2007 study conducted jointly by Q Interactive and MarketingSherpa, consumers report email marketing as spam for a variety of reasons, none of which has to do with what we actually define as spam in the email marketing world:

·    52% of those surveyed said they didn’t sign up to receive the emails
·    41% said the email wasn’t of interest to them
·    25% said they receive too much email from the sender
·    And 20% said they receive too much email from all senders

Remember that word we keep using in this blog? Relevance? If these consumers considered the emails relevant, they wouldn’t report them as spam. Notice that more than half of those surveyed said they didn’t sign up to receive the emails. They did, but obviously they didn’t get what they expected. Also notice that frequency comes into play. Frequency is part of relevance. If you tell a consumer what they want to hear, but too often, that will annoy them just as much as trying to tell them about something they don’t care about.

Spam: The best way to keep it in the kitchen and out of the inbox is to be relevant and sensitive to your subscribers’ wants and expectations. Because it doesn’t matter if you think you’re spam or not. It only matters what your subscribers think.

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.

To take that to another level,it is important to realize that opt in is the most important thing you can do to protect your reputation and therefore your deliverability. Permission-based email marketing will always result in a better sender reputation, meaning it’s imperative that you put the effort into growing your number of opt ins, not just your number of emails. Remember that a quality email list will serve you better than a quantity email list. The list will be smaller but more receptive to your offers, resulting in more conversions. And less likely to report you as spam, which will protect your reputation.

For more information on protecting and managing your sender reputation, see this month’s ClickMail Marketer.

Last month we offered a dozen practical ways to grow your in-house email list. This month, we’ll share one of our favorite campaigns with you. But then we want you to come up with a few other interesting ways and either post them as comments here or email them to us at blog@clickmailmarketing.com. We’ll share them in this email marketing blog.

This favorite example was spotted last spring by a friendly freelance email copywriter. Tully’s Coffee and Pemco Insurance teamed up for a fun campaign that also raised money for charity and collected email addresses to boot. All they did was offer small pieces of paper where people could write extremely long, fictional coffee orders. You, as the consumer, got your name entered into a drawing. Tully’s got the goodwill created when you laughingly made up your order. Pemco got the goodwill created when they donated money to charity…and somebody collected email addresses, because each slip of paper offered a place to enter your email address at the bottom.

You can read more about the campaign by clicking here.

Then send us your clever, out-of-the-box ideas for growing your in-house email marketing list!

1.    Include a sample newsletter or email promo on your Web site so they can “try before they buy”
2.    Offer an incentive for signing up, like a discount on your next order
3.    Create a printed card or flyer to include with every order shipped, encouraging people to go online and sign up
4.    Include a compelling statement and a link to the signup page in all employee email signatures
5.    Teach customer service folks to ask people for their email addresses when talking to them on the phone, telling them the benefits of signing up
6.    Tip 5 goes for salespeople as well

With a good quality in-house email list, you reap the benefits of permission-based email marketing: People who want to hear from you and are more likely to buy from you. Your email delivery rates are higher because your email is anticipated. And your email marketing ROI grows along with your list.