Consent That Ends Six Months After an Enquiry

From the contact form to the newsletter

Someone asks a question through your website: a price, a date, whether you work in their area. They get an answer, and from then on they also get the newsletter.

Sometimes the form sends every address to the mailing service by itself. Sometimes a staff member copies new addresses across once a month. Either way, the list grows with everyone who ever asked anything.

Under CASL, Canada's anti-spam law, an enquiry does give the business something. It gives six months, not a lifetime. What follows is general information about the rules, not legal advice.

And the person who asked about one job may never have wanted monthly offers at all.

What an enquiry allows

CASL requires consent before a business sends commercial email. Express consent is given by the person and lasts until they withdraw it. Implied consent arises from certain relationships, and it runs out.

An enquiry or application about your products or services creates implied consent for six months from the day it was made. A purchase creates two years from the date of the purchase.

The reply to the enquiry is a separate matter. A quote or an answer the person asked for is not a promotion, and it does not need the consent a newsletter does.

So the six months covers the newsletter, the offers and any follow-up that sells something. It is a window, and it closes.

How enquirers end up on the list

• A form connected to the mailing service that adds every sender.
• A monthly copy and paste from the enquiries inbox.
• A quoting system that shares its contacts with the newsletter.
• An old import of every address in the office's email.
• A newsletter box on the enquiry form, ticked before anyone arrives.

The first is the hardest to see, because nobody does anything. The connection was set up once, often by whoever built the form, and it has added every enquirer since without a date or a question.

Six months is a clock

Each address that came from an enquiry needs the date of that enquiry beside it. Without the date, there is no way to tell when its six months end.

A new question or quote request from the same person starts a fresh six months. Your own emails do not: sending them more mail extends nothing.

If they buy, the purchase gives two years from its date. If they say yes to the newsletter, the clock stops mattering, because express consent has no end date.

Everyone else should leave the promotional list when their six months run out.

Ask in the reply

The easiest moment to ask is your reply to their enquiry. They wrote to you, they are reading your answer, and one line at the end costs nothing.

Say what the newsletter contains and how often it comes, then ask. For example: we send a short email about once a month with new work and seasonal offers; reply yes if you would like it.

Ask once. Silence is not a yes, and a second or third reminder is exactly the kind of email that gets marked as spam.

An unticked box on the form

The other place to ask is the enquiry form itself: a box, unticked when the page loads, saying they would also like the newsletter, separate from the button that sends the question.

Ticking it is express consent, provided the wording names the business and a way to reach it, says what will be sent and says they can unsubscribe. Keep the date, the address and the exact wording beside each tick.

Leaving it unticked must not stop the enquiry going through. The question and the newsletter are two separate decisions.

A worked example

A shed builder with a display yard on a highway at the edge of a suburb builds garden sheds, workshops and small backyard studios to order, and assembles them on site.

Most enquiries come through a quote form in spring. Many people take months to decide, and some never build at all.

The quote form fed straight into the mailing service, so every enquirer got the monthly newsletter from then on: new designs, a spring sale, photographs of finished builds.

By autumn, people who had asked about a single shed in March were still getting offers. Some unsubscribed, a few marked the newsletter as spam, and one replied asking where the builder had found the address.

The builder cut the connection and added an unticked newsletter box to the form. Each quote reply now ends with one line asking whether the person would like the newsletter.

Every address from an enquiry was dated. Those past six months, with no purchase and no yes, came off the list; the rest were asked once, with the date their consent runs out noted beside each.

Acting on the answer

A yes moves the address to the express list, with the date and the wording of the question it answered. That record is what shows consent later, if anyone asks.

A no means no newsletter and no offers. The quote they asked for, and replies about that job, can still go out.

No answer means the six months apply. Note the end date beside the address and remove it when the date arrives, rather than relying on someone to remember.

The counter-case

A business that never sends a newsletter has nothing to sort. Nor does one whose list fills only through a separate sign-up form that records the date.

Some enquirers will say no, and the list will be smaller. The ones who leave were the least likely to open it and the most likely to press the spam button.

For any business that adds enquirers to its list, though, the rule is the same: date the enquiry, ask in the reply, and let the six months end.

Before the next newsletter

1. Find every route from your forms to the list.
2. Cut any automatic connection that adds every enquirer.
3. Date each address that came from an enquiry.
4. Add an unticked newsletter box to the enquiry form.
5. End each reply with one line asking.
6. Record every yes with its date and wording.
7. Remove the rest when their six months end.

Step three is the one the others depend on. Without the date of each enquiry, nobody can tell which addresses are still inside their six months and which ran out long ago.

Consent from a purchase, which lasts two years, is covered in a checkout that signs customers up automatically.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.