If you’re an Agent in Canada, you should be aware of Canada’s anti-spam legislation (CASL) and its implications on your real estate email marketing. There are important new CASL provisions that come into effect on July 1st.
You need consent to send email marketing messages to those in your real estate CRM database. Certain messages are exempt from CASL, which you can learn more about here.
There are two types of consent: express consent and implied consent. Express consent is when the recipient either asked to be added to your mailing list or responded affirmatively to the invitation to be on your mailing list. Implied consent is that which is received without explicitly asking for permission.
Consent may be implied in any of these common circumstances:
- You have an existing business relationship with the recipient (have done business together within the last two years or an inquiry was made by the recipient within the last six months).
- The recipient has given you their email address in some way and did not state that they’d like to be excluded from your email distribution list.
- Your email is sent to follow-up on a referral from a family member or existing business partner/colleague.
The new provisions also state that your emails need to include your name, mailing address, and phone number, email address, or website.
As well, all of your emails need to include a way for recipients to easily unsubscribe (which they will if sent from IXACT Contact). You must remove those who unsubscribed from your mailing list within 10 business days.
And remember that if you’re purchasing mailing lists, this is against the rules.
The good news is that IXACT Contact has added features into the Agent CRM to help you become CASL compliant. Click here to view the email we sent to our Canadian customers with all of these new features and what we plan to release in the future.
We hope that this will serve as a helpful guide for you moving forward.
Please note that this is a short summary of some key CSAL guidelines and implications. We recommend you read the full guidelines here to ensure you’re in compliance as there is more that you need to be aware of aside from what we’ve highlighted in this blog post.
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