As I write this it’s the third day that Canada’s new anti-spam legislation (CASL) has been in place, and there are no reports of enterprises — or SMB’s — going out of business.
It may be too early to say, pessimists may argue, which is a fair point. Organizations that rely on email to get their messages out might need to take a few weeks to see the impact of complying with the law, which compels many companies to get consent — if they haven’t already done so — to send commercial messages.
University of Ottawa Internet law professor Michael Geist, who thinks the law is long overdue, has an interesting conclusion gleaned from a Tweet by Jason Faber the marketing manager of BoldRadius, a Gatineau, Que.,-based software development, training and consulting firm. The firm discovered this week that the open and click rate for its regular newsletter increased over its usual metric. Faber wasn’t surprised.
Neither should anyone else be, Geist argues:  When readers have to go out of the way to give consent to receiving materials, they will be more likely to look at what arrives in their inboxes.
The impact of CASL has yet to be fully measured, but evidence of a calamity has yet to surface.