As we celebrate our nation’s birthday on July 1st, the Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) 
will launch to make it harder for spammers to inundate our inboxes. As a small business owner, I thought I’d share a few links that help explain the exemptions for reaching out to business contacts:
1. Deloitte’s “Canadian Anti-Spam Law: Key Exemptions” has a great summary.
2. Business Vancouver also recently published a helpful article entitled “The ifs, ands and buts of new anti-spam legislation.”
Both summaries indicate that “there’s an implied consent to receive emails from a business when there is an ongoing relationship.” But you must also provide an unsubscribe option and contact information if you send out a message with commercial intent.
In addition, businesses with direct contact relationships need to be aware that “while implied consent has a shelf life and will expire, express consent does not expire once granted.” That’s where things get a little tricky. And small businesses like mine, who use a free platform like WordPress, need to get creative in re-affirming that consent.
Since this blog promotes my business, I want to make sure that all of my readers who have opted-in to receive my posts via email are ok with receiving them the future. I really value your readership and hope that you will continue to follow my small business journey.
But if you no longer wish to receive blog posts from me, WordPress offers an unsubsribe option at the bottom of every email post that goes out. If you are a WordPress blogger, you can also remove blog posts from your inbox via the “blogs I follow” section. If you ever have any trouble, you can email me at andrea@therunningstart.ca (or respond to the email that goes out with every blog post) and let me know if you need me to look into the matter further.
I also welcome your feedback on how I can make these blog posts more useful to you to keep you reading every month. I want to play nice in your inbox.
Thanks again for your continued support. I hope that everyone in Canada has a great long weekend. Happy Canada Day!