I’ve read two articles lately that seem to give the opinion that Confirmed Opt-in emails are going to make you CASL compliant. I’m going to explore that Myth and tell you why it is just not true.

Myth: Using confirmed opt-in (aka. Double opt-in) will make your email collection data compliant under CASL.

Details:

Using Confirmed opt-in for your email program is a great way to ensure that you have good clean data in in your list, however simply enabling this feature alone does not make you CASL complaint. There are several pieces of information that also need to be made available at the time of subscription to the consumer; 1 – Postal Address, 2 – unsubscribe statement and 3 – contact information for the organization collecting the information is provided at the point of data collection.

But wait if they don’t confirm they are not subscribed…

While that is true you have already collected the consumers information and asked for some type of consent – either implied or express – and your COI email is simply validating and adding additional auditing data to the record of the consumer. Also by using COI you are actually sending them a CEM to confirm their request to receive future CEM’s from your organization.

Don’t get caught in the false security of being protected from CASL simply by using COI – do it because it makes your data better and it gives you the added validation that your data is good under CASL.

Results: BUSTED!

** Remember that sending an email with a request for consent is considered a CEM under CASL – you need to be very clear about the content of the COI email and the perscribed information both oat the point of collection and in each of the CEM’s you send. **