Understand Canada's anti-spam legislation

You will learn

Learn about the Canadian law that governs commercial electronic messages (such as email and SMS), which is the Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL).

When sending marketing messages, it’s important that you know about this law if you have Canadian recipients.

About CASL

CASL is a Canadian federal law that is designed to protect consumers from spam, electronic threats, and other misuses of digital technology.

CASL covers all commercial electronic messages (CEMs), which are messages that:

• Are in an electronic format (e.g., emails, SMS/MMS messages, social media messages, and instant messages)
• Are sent to an electronic address (e.g., an email account, a telephone account, an instant messaging account, and any other similar account)
• Encourage participation in a commercial activity (e.g., offers to purchase or sell products, goods, and services or promoting products, goods, services, people, or businesses).

The 3 main CASL requirements that you need to comply with when sending CEMs are:

1. Obtain consent
2. Provide identification information
3. Provide a way to unsubscribe/opt out of messaging

Fines for violating CASL can be up to $1 million per violation for individuals and up to $10 million per violation for businesses. Both individuals and businesses (including their directors, officers, and other agents) can be liable for violations of CASL.

Under CASL, you must obtain proper consent from recipients of CEMs. In the next section, we go over what it means to have this consent.

Consent: explicit vs. implicit

There are 2 types of consent under CASL:

• Explicit (also known as express)
• Implicit (also known as implied)

CASL primarily relies on explicit consent, meaning that anyone you message must opt into that channel, with a few exceptions. You must also keep a record of all consents obtained under CASL (i.e., when and how consent was obtained).

Additional requirements under CASL

In addition to obtaining consent, CASL requires the following information to be included within every message:

• Your business name, if different from your name (if not, identify your name), and the name of anyone else on whose behalf you are sending the message. If you send on someone else’s behalf, make clear who is sending the message and on whose behalf.
• Contact information, which must remain valid for at least 60 days after your message was sent and include:
  • A valid mailing address
  • At least one of the following
    • Email address
    • Web address
    • Phone number to reach an agent or voice messaging system
• An unsubscribe mechanism (e.g., an unsubscribe link, “text STOP to opt out,” etc.)

You must include this information, or a way to quickly get this information, in every CEM. In emails, the typical approach is to add these details to the footer. For SMS and MMS messages (and other CEMs where it’s not practicable to include this info in the body of the message), the typical method is adding “Info:” followed by a link to a webpage that contains this information to the end of each CEM.

The unsubscribe mechanism must be easy to use and available at no cost. Keep the unsubscribe address or webpage valid for at least 60 days after sending the message. Honor unsubscribe requests without delay and no later than 10 business days after the request is sent, without requiring the recipient to take any further action.

Best practices

While not explicitly required by CASL, there are a few best practices you can follow when sending CEMs:

• Include at least one link to your website
• Send between 9 a.m. and 8 p.m. in the recipients’ local time (for SMS and direct messages); use quiet hours for flows and quiet hours for campaigns to automatically prevent sending SMS outside of these times
• Do not use spammy phrases in your messages or email subject lines; e.g., “free money”
• Provide value: every CEM should be helpful to the recipient; if not, subscribers will likely opt out
• Avoid sending a lot of emojis and using acronyms unless you know your audience understands or responds positively to them
• Do not overload recipients with too many messages; for instance, use Smart Sending to limit how often someone can receive messages via a certain channel

CASL exemptions

Some CEMs are exempt from CASL’s consent, identification, and unsubscribe requirements. Examples include:

• Messages sent in response to a recipient’s complaint, question, or request, or messages that are otherwise solicited by the recipient (i.e., the “email reply” exemption)
• Messages sent by an employee or consultant to another employee or consultant of the same organization, or of another organization with which it has a relationship, if the message concerns the activities of the organization receiving it
• Messages sent by or on behalf of registered charities, where the message’s primary purpose is raising funds for the charity, or by or on behalf of political parties or organizations, where its primary purpose is soliciting contributions
• Messages sent to fulfill a legal obligation; provide notice of a pending or existing right, judicial or legal obligation, or court order; or to enforce a judicial order, court order, or legal right
• Messages sent by a person who reasonably believes the message will be accessed in a foreign country listed in the regulations, as long as the message complies with that country’s applicable anti-spam law
• Messages sent by an individual to an individual recipient with whom the sender has a personal or family relationship

Transactional messages

It’s also important to note that purely transactional messages (e.g., messages confirming a purchase, subscription, delivery, etc.) that don’t include any advertising or promotional content are exempt from CASL’s consent requirement, but not the identification information and unsubscribe mechanism requirements described above. Examples include:

• Providing information about a warranty, a recall, safety, or security for a product or service that the recipient bought
• Providing factual information about an ongoing account, membership, subscription, or similar relationship, or delivering product updates or upgrades that the recipient is entitled to receive
• Giving a quote or estimate for a service, product, or good that the recipient requested
• Confirming, facilitating, or completing a commercial transaction that the recipient agreed to enter

Sending to Canadian recipients using Klaviyo

When sending to Canadian recipients using Klaviyo, it’s important that you also comply with Klaviyo’s Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy, which, in certain cases, are more strict than CASL requirements. For example, in order to send SMS and MMS messages to recipients using Klaviyo SMS, you must obtain explicit consent.

Additional resources