Anti-spam legislation includes a lot of rules about communicating with customers. Is everyone in your dealership following them?
Nobody likes getting spam emails or texts, and so the Canadian government did something about it. Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) has been around since 2014, but it’s a good idea to regularly monitor your practices.
There are serious financial penalties for contravening CASL. You may have employees who have come from other industries and may not be familiar with it, so it’s important to stay on top of it. Keeping within CASL guidelines isn’t difficult, but the rules must be met. You can also be liable if a third party sends messages on your behalf, such as a company or individual that handles your website.
CASL covers commercial electronic messages (CEM). These include information about sales or promotions, sent to electronic addresses including emails, SMS text messages, or to instant messaging accounts. To send a CEM to these types of accounts, you must have obtained consent, you must provide your identification information, and provide a way for the recipient to unsubscribe from further messages.
Consent to receive messages includes implied and express consent. It’s considered implied consent if someone has already made a commercial transaction with your company, such as buying a vehicle or paying for service. Even so, your messages must still remain within the guidelines. The message must contain identifying information, including a mailing address. It must also include a phone number that reaches an employee or voice messaging system; or an email address; or a web address.
You are permitted to send CEMs for up to two years following that person’s last purchase or lease from you, or for up to six months after someone has made an application or an inquiry about a purchase or lease. After that, you must have express consent to send any more.
There are other definitions of implied consent permitted under CASL, but they can be tricky. If someone publishes their email address publicly on a website, and hasn’t added that CEMs should not be sent to it, you are permitted to send a message, but only if it pertains directly to that person’s business role. This could include reaching out to fleet managers about vehicle sales, but be sure you’re following all the rules about the message.
Express consent means a person has agreed to accept CEMs from you. Oral consent is accepted, but written consent gives you a digital or paper trail if you ever have to prove it. You can put a link on your website where people can sign up to receive CEMs. However, you can’t send a message to someone asking for their consent – that message itself contravenes the CASL rules. There’s no time limit on how long you can send CEMs to someone who gave express consent, but you must cease if that person asks you to stop, or otherwise unsubscribes from your list.
Your list of people who have given express consent is considered part of your business. You can’t sell the list on its own, but it can be part of the deal if you buy or sell a dealership. It has to be included in the paperwork, so ensure it’s part of the transaction.
CASL covers electronic messages. You can still reach prospective customers by Canada Post mail, or a telephone call. However, cold-calls may come under the federal Unsolicited Telecommunications Rules. It’s intended to rein in telemarketers – the people who call you at dinner, wanting to clean your air ducts – and it’s unlikely you’ll run afoul of it, but it’s always a good idea to make sure you’re following best practices when reaching out to customers.
The devil is in the details, as the saying goes, and the legislation has more than a few of them. For example, sending a message that includes a logo or hyperlink in your signature doesn’t necessarily turn that message into a CEM – but if you add a tag line that promotes a product, or encourages your recipient to purchase a product or service, it’s now a commercial message and subject to the CASL rules. Whenever you communicate with customers, be sure you’re doing it right.