An open letter from Fawn Annan, President and Group Publisher
Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) is supposed to keep you from being inundated with email messages that you don’t want. We have some real questions about how effective it will be. But in the short run, it has filled your email box with all kinds of invitations to stay connected.
We’ve sent a few of these ourselves – but very few and only to a small and targeted group. Why?
The reality is that IT World Canada and all its related publications have been operating to the letter and spirit of CASL type legislation for many years now. As publishers, we’ve always respected our audience and sought permission to send information. As publishers, we’ve carefully maintained records of our subscribers over the years. When we moved from print to electronic records we continued this practice. As a result, the opinion we have received is that we are already complying with the CASL on key points.
From July 1st we will, like others in the industry, make some fine tuning to wording of our forms and materials to meet the new technical requirements – “dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s” of CASL compliance.
But we didn’t need legislation to drive us forward. We’re always sensitive to the needs of our readers and we continue in that practice. In the past year, we’ve consolidated a number of our newsletters to try to minimize any duplication of information. We’ve implemented a “CIO Certified” program to try to raise the quality of information to our readers. There’s nothing more frustrating than downloading what you hope is useful information on a key topic only to find it’s little more than a “product pitch”. We’re continually reviewing statistics to determine what most interests our readers and give you more of what you are looking for.
In the coming year, we’ll be working hard to make it much easier for you to manage the content we do send you. We are a business, but we are a business with a purpose. We want to offer great content that helps you leverage technology for business results. We want that to be world class and relevant to our distinctly Canadian audience.
We can always improve. We read every email from every audience member and do our level best to try to take your suggestions and input. You are more than our audience – you are our community and our friends. So please, send us your suggestions on how we can do better. I’d love to hear from you.
But in the meantime, if we didn’t send you an email, it’s because we know – we all get too much email.
