Tracking Communications Consent Opt-In for CAN-SPAM, CASL and GDPR
Anti-spam regulations are becoming more and more prominent in company data transmissions to increase data protection and privacy. A few regulatory devices follow:
The CAN-SPAM Act is the United State’s legislation directing email marketers about what they can and cannot send, and focuses on:
- It addresses email spamming
- These regulations only apply to sending email
- It stops the send of commercial messages without permission but allows the send of transactional messages or relationship-related messaging without permission
- States that most email service providers won’t allow the send unless opted in
Canada's Anti-Spam Law (CASL) is a new anti-spam law that applies to all electronic messages (i.e. email, texts) that organizations send in connection with a commercial activity. Its key feature requires that Canadian and global organizations sending commercial electronic messages (CEMs) within, from or to Canadian organizations must receive consent from recipients before actually sending out the messages. When requesting consent, you must provide recipients with:
- The name of the person or organization seeking consent
- A mailing address and either a phone number, voice message system, email address or website where recipients can access an agent for more information
- A statement identifying the person on whose behalf consent is being sought
- The identity and contact information of any third-party or affiliate used to obtain consent
- A free unsubscribe mechanism that lets recipients electronically opt-out of communications
- The ability to opt-out of all types of communications sent by either your organization or a third-party partner
The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) exposes folks to stiff penalties for sending commercial messaging to people who have not explicitly opted-in.The General Data Protection Regulation is a regulation in EU law on data protection and privacy for all individual citizens of the European Union and the European Economic Area. There are seven key principles:
- Lawfulness, fairness and transparency
- Purpose limitation
- Data minimization
- Accuracy
- Storage limitation
- Integrity and confidentiality (security)
- Accountability
Enquire MAP provides marketers the tools to help with CASL and GDPR compliance. Our recommendation is to only send emails to recipients who have explicitly provided their consent to do so. Enquire MAP offers the feature of selecting the Opt-in survey field in Web Forms under Assets.
All contacts who check this field when submitting a form have provided their consent that is logged with a timestamp in the system. Their permission can be revoked at any time by opting to unsubscribe (also assigns a timestamp.) In Campaigns, simply checking the box enables the send of emails to recipients who have opted in. (Note: Opting in overrides previous unsubscribe actions)
In Enquire MAP under Administration then Account Settings, the option to Force Double Opt In (i.e. explicitly providing consent) can be used. By setting this in the Agency account a checkbox will appear on all campaigns that will only send emails to recipients that have provided their consent with an Opt In flag).
Once this setting is enabled in the account, the checkbox can be used in all campaigns moving forward:
Additionally, the option to add an Opt In URL or button for all emails built within the Enquire MAP platform by using the dynamic term %STATIC_OPT_IN_LINK%:
When prospects click the Link/ button, they are automatically redirected to the standard response Thank you for Opt In page which can be customized according to the instructions available from your Account Manager.
Using these features will reduce any exposure to CASL or GDPR fines significantly.