This is Part 2 of a two-part series on the new Canadian Anti-Spam Law. Part 1 discussed the components of the law and this part will look at how your business can adapt its communications strategy to be CASL compliant.
The new Canadian Anti-Spam Law forces businesses to adapt their communications strategy. In Part 1 of this series I overviewed what the law actually requires, but now let’s talk about how your business can actually improve its communications strategy as it complies with the new CASL regulations.
Focus, Focus, Focus
The new CASL requirements will most likely shrink your mailing list, but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. One benefit of CASL is that it will highlight your best leads. Focus on the people who are clearly interested in your company and work on developing that relationship. By putting more energy into fewer contacts, you’ll be able to speak directly to your followers’ needs.
As a bonus, though your lead generation stats may decrease, so should your bounce rates. You can also look for higher open and click-through rates since your emails will only reach people who genuinely want to hear from you. If this isn’t what you’re seeing, then you might want to look at your contact list and refocus your content.
Adapt Your Content
With your new, shorter list of contacts, you can adapt your content accordingly. Look for trends amongst your followers: Are they from similar industries? Do most of them live in a few key cities? What products or services are they looking into? If you can define why your contacts want to stay in touch, you can keep them interested in the long term by creating content specifically for them. Of course everyone is different, and you can only cater to a certain extent, but identifying and understanding dominant trends is a great way to maintain engagement.
Having a few popular topics saved somewhere also comes in handy if you’re trying to come up with new content ideas. Go back to what your contacts enjoyed and work from there.
Be Social
Yes, CASL does affect social media, but not to the same extent as it affects email marketing. While you will be wanting consent before sending social media followers direct messages, the public publishing portion (ie. The main part!) of social sites is not affected by CASL.
Developing a strong social presence is an integral part of finding new contacts in the digital world. CASL will shrink and focus your distribution list, which will then help you create adapted content for your loyal audience. Share that great content with the world on social media platforms to find other like-minded people. Using content that resonates with your leads will help you connect with people from around the world who have at least one thing in common: an interest in your brand’s message. Building a community on social media can be an effective counterpoint to a smaller email distribution list.
Go Multilingual
Getting involved on social media connects you to a huge Internet population, but you aren’t necessarily reaching as many people as you think if you’re only reaching out in English. Since less than 30% of the Internet population uses the Internet in English, looking into a multilingual social media strategy can give your marketing efforts an added boost.
Going multilingual also allows you to adapt your content even further. Impress your followers by not only communicating with them in their own language, but also by sharing multilingual content that picks up on unique linguistic and cultural nuances.
The Key Takeaway
The new Canadian Anti-Spam Law is an opportunity to fine-tune your cultural marketing strategy. Whether you’re looking to reach specific linguistic, geographical, or interest-based groups, ensuring that your content is speaking to your target market’s interests is the best marketing strategy you can deploy, regardless of whether or not you use email campaigns.
Want to learn more about alternatives to email marketing? Download our free Guide to Cultural Marketing in the Digital World.
