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Suzanne Carawan

By: Suzanne Carawan on July 1st, 2015

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Happy Canada Day!

Email Marketing

mailto:demo@example.com?Subject=HighRoad Solutions - interesting article

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Before I worked at HighRoad, I thought of Canada as a big,friendly neighbor to the north. Full of wonderful cities, clean air and big skies with adorable people who have the uncanny ability to be incredibly nice while being tough as nails in a fight. My sons play a bunch of Canadian teams in their lacrosse lives and even there you can find a dad who is throwing out an even keel "C'mon ref, let 'em play. They're just boys. Keep it up, Scotty!" while his gargantuan son Scotty flattens the American kid with an illegal body check and puts one on net. Yes, I love Canada and always have. I'm the only kid I know from Washington, DC that convinced my parents to take me to Canada to look for colleges and then, later in life, ended up with a BFF from Montreal who finally taught me that the reason I'm cold in winter is that Washingtonians continue to wear cotton which is a laughable fabric to Canadians.

My thoughts and feelings for Canada were always warm and fuzzy...right up until last year when CASL came into law. Now, as soon as I see the Canadian women's soccer team during the FIFA World Cup, I'm thinking about all of the people I wish I could email, but can't. I'm feeling disassociated with my northern neighbors and see that the continued nice/tough combo continues in the email space.

On one hand, CASL is so nice to the end recipient. It's a great law to help protect individuals and ensure their email journeys are not abusive. On the other hand, like Scotty on the field, CASL is tough as nails. You mess with the wrong Canadian through the wrong promotional email and you're getting more than a trip to the penalty box. 

As Compufinder found out earlier this year, CASL violations can pack a punch. The Canadian Radio & Television Communication Commission handed out a $1.1M penalty to the company earlier this year due to their flagrant email fouls. Compufinder was found at fault for sending...get this...B2B email that didn't include working unsubscribe links and sending to email addreseses that it ripped off of websites. Consumers weren't even the target here, but business individuals and maybe Compufinder didn't know that you can't buy or scrape email addresses and then send in this mass email promotional way anymore.

I can't blame them that much--our association industry is still shocked when I go out to speaking engagements and have to alert them to the fact that you can't grow in digital by buying email addresses and using these to send "Join Now/Early Bird Special/Buy My Course Now" types of emails to unsuspecting individuals who have shown zero interest in your association.

Ah yes, one of my favorite topics indeed--how does one grow in the world of digital when I'm an association and think through a near-pure Email Brain? Well, this blog is one way. Blogs are considered a top of the funnel (TOFU) way to attract prospects as blogs are typically open to the public, indexed by search engines and can be the end result of social media posts that include a trackable URL to the post. Many associations such as the SnowSports Industries America organization are using blogs as a key to their growth strategies.Blogs have a double bonus because they're always paired with an email notification system that automatically takes blog posts and puts them into an email template and sends out to blog subscribers. This is a double bonus because it allows my orgs to easily post and get content out to subscribers.

But, just remember, Canadian subscribers are different and need special white glove treatment even in the blog world. As organizations move into blogging and start strategically thinking about their email portfolio, refreshing their memory on CASL, putting in CASL mechanisms within your email preference page and database are critical. Here's some resources to help you out before you get your butt kicked by CASL (see? I'm picking up the nice/tough combo, eh?" Love you Canadians--have a great day celebrating your great country!

Get CASL Resources