APIs & Integrations

Nicht anwendbar

Is HubSpot violating Canada's anti-spam law?

We have been trying to get this question answered for exactly 2 years now to no avail. Hoping one of you can shed light on this issue. Here goes it…

HubSpot automaticlly subscribes new contacts to every active email type that exists in your portal. This has been a sticking point for us in completely moving forward with HubSpot. We currently use MailChimp for our email campaigns.

So if you have multiple active email types, let’s say A, B, C, D, and E. A new visitor fills out a form to subscribe to B, they are now a contact who is subscribed to not only B, but all others as well. Essentially they’ve just been subscribed to four additional email types without knowing they did so.

The following two articles highlight this issue.


Excerpt from A Guide to the New Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL)

It’s important to note that the recipient has to manually “opt in,” so pre-checked checkboxes are not okay for getting consent. One that the users check themselves is okay, as is a box that the users type their email addresses into with a submission button next to it that users hit, but those must also be accompanied with something explaining why you want their consent (the purpose), who you are (information), and that they can un-consent. Additionally, you can’t just put “… and I consent to receive emails” into your website’s legal copy.

Please have a look at our email preferences page to see how a new contact has to manually opt out of each type.

Excerpt from CASL and Marketing Automation

The opposing view here is that the Canadian who converted on the form was only converting for the purpose of receiving the initial content/offer and that they must opt-in to any subsequent electronic communication.


The most common advice we hear is to make sure you include a clear call-to-action in the welcome email that directs the new contact to their preference page so they can then uncheck all email types they don’t want. Not only is this bad User Experience, it seems to blantely go against Canada’s anti spam law.

Have a look at our HubSpot email preferences page to see what I am talking about.

Have any of you successfully dealt with this issue? If so, we would love to hear how you did so.

Thanks so much for the help!

26 Antworten
paxton
HubSpot-Produktteam
HubSpot-Produktteam

Is HubSpot violating Canada's anti-spam law?

As an email deliverability consultant at HubSpot here are my two cents. When you create an email you will always set one email type. There is a 1:1 relationship there. For this reason, lists have always been a better way to segment based on interest. I think this thread covers this pretty well.

As a general rule of thumb when naming email types, describe the content of the email, and not the type of contact who will receive it. Ie. ‘fundraising emails’, ‘important announcements’, ‘events’ are your email types; and ‘Parenting’, ‘Marriage’, ‘Pastors’ are your lists based on interest.

In line with MFJLabs22d proposed solution, there are often far fewer email types than interest categories. This allows for contacts who are interested in multiple things (contacts married with children) to be sent emails targeted to that interest-combo.

In the past, here is how I’ve advised customers to proceed if they’ve set up email types tied to non-mutually exclusive groups:

  1. Add an unchecked checkbox to forms to allow contacts to expressly consent.
  2. Rename your email types so that they are mutually exclusive groups that describe the different types of content.
  3. Create lists of contacts based on what they are interested in. One list for A, one for B...
  4. Add the lists above as Included lists for your automated emails.
  5. Create a form to allow recipients to specify their interest(s)
  6. (Optional) Include a link to that form somewhere in future emails.

At this point, it is probably more wise to await release of our changes to subscriptions, than to implement the above, but thought I would drop it in here in case it could be useful.

MFrankJohnson
Vordenker/-in

Is HubSpot violating Canada's anti-spam law?

Hey @Lee,
Thanks for your question. Didn't go back and re-read this entire thread ... best I can remember it was more focused on CASL.

Regarding your question ("How would I ...") and the above list segments withstanding for Focus on the Family Canada, I'm inclined to stand by my original statement and expand a little.

I've posted a comprehensive response (with an example) in the HubSpot Community Forum where you'll also be able to upvote the discussion submitted as an Idea a year ago (as you pointed out earlier i think). It's listed as, "Opt users out of certain email types".

Hope it helps and thanks again for your question.

 

Note: Please search for recent posts as HubSpot evolves to be the #1 CRM platform of choice world-wide.

 

Hope that helps.

 

Be well,
Frank


www.mfrankjohnson.com
0 Upvotes
MFrankJohnson
Vordenker/-in

Is HubSpot violating Canada's anti-spam law?

I'll ask what may seem like an oversimplified question and offer an equally 'simple' solution, but first I'd like to say thanks to @Lee for starting the original thread as well as to everyone who has contributed so far. As stated earlier, it emphasises the degree to which many smart people are struggling with compliance issues throughout the world. So let's get to it ..

An Oversimplified Question
Aren't ALL HubSpot Marketing Email Types just various forms of marketing emails? (rhetorical)

An Oversimplified Solution
Reduce the number of HubSpot Marketing 'Email Types' used in your portal.
We use two -- e.g.,

  1. Marketing
  2. Blog Subscriptions (only if applicable).

Using any more than this only serves to confuse subscribers and (sometimes more importantly) unsubscribers about an already overly complicated issue.

Oversimplified Rationale
If marketers, developers, and implementers of these complex systems are confused by their use it's safe to say that email recipients are at least just as confused. Problem? When we're confused we typically don't hit the "SPAM" button.

I fear that abuse complaint rates will rise increasingly and in direct proportion to our lack of clarity around the use of these advanced platforms (not just HubSpot).

Finally, and in a rare case when I make a comment in 'defense' of a corporation, I don't think it's fair to say that HubSpot is responsible for facilitating CASL or GDPR violations simply because of the confusion around HubSpot Marketing Email Types and simply because the platform may allow accidental &/or unintended use. The page cited, although in desperate need of better examples (hint ... hint ...), explicitly states that email types are for marketing emails in our marketing portal which by definition and implication means 'marketing emails'.

Attempting to hold HubSpot accountable for our violation of CASL or GDPR just doesn't pass the reasonableness test. He11, if we could hold a corporation responsible for our unintended misuse of its products/services I think the gun manufacturers would've been in trouble long ago. haha (not intended to make light of a very serious issue)

Thanks again all. Very thought provoking and informative thread.

PEACE

 

Note: Please search for recent posts as HubSpot evolves to be the #1 CRM platform of choice world-wide.

 

Hope that helps.

 

Be well,
Frank


www.mfrankjohnson.com
Nicht anwendbar

Is HubSpot violating Canada's anti-spam law?

Hi @MFJLabs, thanks for weighing in. I'm not sure I completely understand your solution. Here is what we want to accomplish. I'm interested in seeing how you would implement the following:

Here at Focus on the Family Canada, we have four primary content categories; Marriage, Parenting, Life Challenges, and Faith and Culture. I liken this to the structure of a newspaper with its various sections. Our audience varies widely and we feel it's not the best option to send marriage info to those who aren't married, and parenting info to those without children.

We also have content that does touch multiple groups; fundraising emails, important announcements, events, etc. Our current list structure (in another email service provider) looks like this:

  • Infolettre Garder Le Focus (for our Francophone audience)

  • Focus on Pastors (Information relevant to church staff)

  • Focus on Faith and Culture (Current events)

  • Waiting to Belong (Families wanting to foster/adopt)

  • Focus on Parenting (Self explanatory)

  • Focus on Marriage (Self explanatory)

  • Focus on the Family Canada Updates (fundraising, important announcements, events, etc)

Taking this entire thread into account, how do you propose we structure our overall email system?

P.S. Thanks to you as well @tom_monaghan for the status update.

0 Upvotes
TomMonaghan
HubSpot-Produktteam
HubSpot-Produktteam

Is HubSpot violating Canada's anti-spam law?

Hey folks,

We're hard at work on a host of updates to how we handle subscriptions and the display of the consent / opt-in status. These updates will directly address the issue mentioned above where it can appear that recipients are subscribed to things they aren't actually subscribed to (even if they won't actually get those messages). We've heard you. We're working on it.

On a very related note, here's the latest update to our GDPR efforts: https://www.hubspot.com/data-privacy/gdpr/product-readiness

Best,
Tom

22Eighteen
Mitwirkender/Mitwirkende

Is HubSpot violating Canada's anti-spam law?

Hi all, a very interesting and frustrating read. And I now realize I have even more issues with how HubSpot handles email compliance than I realized. Recently I had a similar issue, which HubSpot says isn’t a glitch but how the system is designed.

How I interpret CASL is as follows:

IMPLIED CONSENT = Anyone who filled in a form but did NOT check a box to subscribe to receive other marketing emails. They should NOT be enrolled in the double opt-in but SHOULD receive the fulfillment email (the info they asked for that is specific to the form they entered their data on). Implied consent is good for 6 months. So even if they did not consent to receive marketing emails, I can still send them for up to 6 months from the last time they filled in a form, unless they opt-out prior to six months.

Although after reading the quote below I’m not 100% my interpretation is correct.

Excerpt from CASL and Marketing Automation
The opposing view here is that the Canadian who converted on the form was only converting for the purpose of receiving the initial content/offer and that they must opt-in to any subsequent electronic communication.

EXPLICIT CONSENT = Anyone who DOES check the box that they’d like to subscribe to receive additional marketing email (NOT specific to the fulfillment of the form they entered their data on) should receive a subscription confirmation email. Explicit consent is good forever, until they opt-out.

Recently a bunch of visitors registered for our webinar, and every single fulfillment email (which included the calendar appointment link and login credentials) was held up (the emails were repeatedly dropped by the system) until the lead received a subscription confirmation email and clicked on the email to complete the double opt-in process. This was regardless of whether or not they checked the box to subscribe. So I had to disable double opt-in and create a list of webinar registrants who did not click the box (or those who did but hadn’t yet clicked on the link to confirm their subscription) and send the fulfillment email again so they would know how to log into the webinar.

In my opinion, at no time should the fulfillment email (specific to the fulfillment of the form they entered their data on) be delayed, or not sent, for/because the double opt-in process

.

0 Upvotes
Nicht anwendbar

Is HubSpot violating Canada's anti-spam law?

@Lucy, please see the following document which is directly from the Canadian government website. While @Philippe_Le_Roux's company blog has a wealth of information I strongly suggest you reference the source directly; especially on matters such as this.

Express consent versus implied consent - What you need to know before sending out your commercial el....

In other news, I've been in discussion with HubSpot support who is helping me get things figured out somewhat. I plan on posting my findings soon.

0 Upvotes
Philippe_Le_Rou
Mitglied

Is HubSpot violating Canada's anti-spam law?

@Lucy in fact when somebody fills a form to receive some specific consent, you have an explicit consent but limited to the kind of content proposed on the form. Explicit consent is unlimited in time but limited to the description of messages the person consents to receive.

A good way to manage it would be to use a formula like “I agree to receive the ebook and future resources, hints and promotions from ACME”.

You can find more practical information about CASL compliance on our dedicated blog at https://certimail.ca/en/blog/

TravisP
Mitwirkender/Mitwirkende

Is HubSpot violating Canada's anti-spam law?

The use of lists gets one most of the way to compliance, but it has an interesting flaw.

Here’s the scenario:

  1. Contact fills out a form and explicitly checks the box for receiving email, which sets a custom property to true/yes

  2. Contact is added to a dynamic list due to true value for custom property

  3. Contact receives email and decides they’d rather not get that, so clicks Unsubscribe link

  4. Contact opts out of corresponding email type

  5. Contact is now still on dynamic list for email type because of custom property, but will be suppressed due to Opt Out = true status

  6. Contact fills out a form, thinks, “I really do like this company” and checks the box to receive email again

  7. No email is sent, because the HubSpot Opt Out property is still set to true - it can’t be changed by any means other than using the mail preferences form

At this point, the only way to get the Contact back to receiving email is to either direct them to pull an old email out of their archives and click the Unsubscribe link or to send them a new transactional email with an email preferences token in it - assuming that you’ve paid for the transactional email module and have a dedicated IP address.

So, technically, yes, you can remain in compliance with CASL using this method, but your contacts can also end up in a state where they can’t easily re-subscribe. Since Opt Out = False can’t be set via workflow or API call, the only option is to somehow get another email to them with their tokenized link to the mail preferences page.

TomMonaghan
HubSpot-Produktteam
HubSpot-Produktteam

Is HubSpot violating Canada's anti-spam law?

Hi TravisP,

There’s one step you’re missing. If the recipient reconverts on a HubSpot form, your portal will automatically send them a resubscription emai if you configured “Resubscription email” under Subscriptions in your settings. See: https://app.hubspot.com/settings/{your portal id here}/marketing/email/subscriptions.

You are correct that we do not allow you HubSpot customers to (re-)subscribe contacts.

Best,
Tom

0 Upvotes
Nicht anwendbar

Is HubSpot violating Canada's anti-spam law?

Wow, interesting observation @TravisP. Thanks for sharing.

I’ve submitted a note to Michael Redbord – VP, Services & Support in hopes he will persuade someone from the HubSpot email development team to come and bring clarity on here. HubSpot is pretty top-notch in many areas and I don’t think they’d intentionally leave something broken.

@tom_monaghan, is there any way someone over there at HubSpot can write a blog post about this? Maybe there is one and I’m just not seeing it. Does the HubSpot Learning Center have a video that shows how to manage multiple email types and lists?

While I’m going to push for my organization to make the move over to HubSpot for all of our email marketing this year, I still feel this is a subject I (and others) don’t fully understand.

Thanks again for your input @TravisP and @tom_monaghan,
Lee

jm
Mitwirkender/Mitwirkende

Is HubSpot violating Canada's anti-spam law?

small addition. Hubspot published a GDPR guide recently ( https://www.hubspot.com/data-privacy/gdpr ) and have addressed consent directly on the page. If consent and subscription is being reviewed, I cannot imagine it will stay the same.

“…we are evaluating new requirements and restrictions imposed by the GDPR and will take any action necessary to ensure that we handle customer data in compliance with applicable law by the 2018 deadline.”

Since Canada’s laws are very consent centric, I imagine that the work done for GDPR compliance will help.

My only wish is that we get to know earlier than May 25th what is being done or planned (much earlier) so we can properly plan and if necessary run any campaigns related to regularising data subject’s data before the deadline.

0 Upvotes
Nicht anwendbar

Is HubSpot violating Canada's anti-spam law?

Thanks for sharing! I look forward to reading this guide.

-Lee

0 Upvotes
Nicht anwendbar

Is HubSpot violating Canada's anti-spam law?

@Julian_McEwen and @Davin_Pukulis_K15t_S,

Thanks so much for weighing in. Your input is encouraging to me. I believe HubSpot is leading the pack as far as combined CRM/Marketing/Sales platforms go and I’d love to see them properly address this.

I feel like this issue is a nuisance to them and thus gets swept under the rug. Revenue growth is strong and this probably has little bearing on things. At least this is how I feel.

On the Canadian side of things, last month the first fine that I know of was levied against a company for violating CASL. The attached decision from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) is dated 19 October 2017.

  • On 5 March 2015, a notice was issued against Canada Inc. for violating CASL. The penalty was levied at $1.1m.

  • Canada Inc. raised a constitutional challenge against CASL, which failed on the grounds presented.

Apparently, this was the first fine levied in regard to CASL violations. I am unsure how many others exist. At this point though, I believe from reading all the previous comments that HubSpot’s system does prevent CASL violations. So while something like this isn’t likely to happen while using HubSpot, it does illustrate the seriousness of email marketing.

I continue to keep my fingers crossed but I am not holding my breath.

@tom_monaghan, what say you?

Cheers,
Lee

0 Upvotes
Nicht anwendbar

Is HubSpot violating Canada's anti-spam law?

Hello everyone,

I put this on the back burner again until someone recently filled out our test landing page; thanks Mike. He is also concerned with this before he chooses HubSpot and wanted to know if I found a solution.

After re-reading Mizret and Jeff’s responses I understand it a little better, but it still doesn’t make sense as to why it is this way.

As a recap using the A, B, C, D, E example from my original post. Each of those emails would have its own email type of the same name. Every email must be associated with a email type, which I understand.

  1. A new visitor fills out a form to subscribe to email A (email type A)

  2. That form is titled email A subscription form

  3. They are added to a smart list titled email A

  4. When email A is created, it is sent to the list by the same name

Now they are on one list only, the email A smart list. They are also subscribed to every active email type. That part doesn’t matter because when emails B, C, D, and E are sent they will use their own respective lists and not the email A smart list. That is good as it ensures the new contact will only receive email A as requested. But then…

What if they go to update their preferences and see they are already “subscribed” to B, C, D, and E? First, the phrase “Manage your subscriptions” on the preferences page is misleading. Why, because those aren’t subscriptions, they’re email types and the two are not intrinsically linked. This is because if that contact sees they are subscribed to all other emails and are ok with it, they will never receive anything other than email A. This is because they need to be added to additional list(s) and in order to do that they need to submit a form, be enrolled in a workflow, or several other criteria.

I now understand how email types have nothing to do with lists, therefore the subscription preferences page is not really providing an accurate indication of what the contact is subscribed to. It’s the lists that count.

The good news in all of this is I can see how HubSpot does appear to comply with CASL given a contact has enrolled themselves onto the smart list via filling out a form and you keep your campaign management clean by never mixing your list(s) and email types. E.g. email A smart list and email D active email type should not occur or else you’re violating CASL.

Anyone have input on the preferences page?

jm
Mitwirkender/Mitwirkende

Is HubSpot violating Canada's anti-spam law?

I have to agree. This implementation is confusing (to me at least).

An email type can be associated with multiple lists. (great for segmenting). The problem i have with this is that what happens if a contact wants to unsub from 1 of your (multiple) lists associated with an email type?

A solution here would be to associate only 1 list to 1 email type but that seems like it defeats the purpose.

As Lee points out, when a contact visits the preferences page, it looks like they might be receiving email from all types - the actual list membership is essentially opaque to the contact.

It also seems to me that you can accidentally end up adding contacts to a list because they are essentially automatically opted in to the email type. the contact only has the option to opt in/out of email types - not lists.

The bottom line is, the prefs pages tells contacts they are opted in to receive email content they didn’t ask for - regardless of the reason and methodology behind it.

TomMonaghan
HubSpot-Produktteam
HubSpot-Produktteam

Is HubSpot violating Canada's anti-spam law?

Email types and subscription preferences are tough to wrap your head around. Let me try again to add a small bit of clarity.

Let’s think about this from the point of view of the Contact.

They convert on a form. In order to capture Express Consent, the HubSpot Customer has included a checkbox that is unchecked by default. This checkbox is for a custom property that captures a grant of permission for a particular Email Type. As far as the Contact is concerned, they have just “subscribed” to a certain type of email.

If a HubSpot Customer intends to send email to contacts who have subscribed to a particular Email Type, they must include the list criteria where the above mentioned contact property is equal to “yes”.

If that Contact happens to visit the their subscription management page, it will appear as if they are subscribed to other email types. This is unfortunately the way it works at present. But if the HubSpot user is collecting Express Consent as outlined above, the Contact will not be receiving any unintentional email.

If the contact later rescinds that permission by unsubscribing, HubSpot will automatically suppress them from any further sends for that specific email type, or for all if they chose to Unsubscribe from All.

This is the basic approach most folks take. Can you get more complicated with dates and aging contacts to sunset / suppress them? Sure. But this method to capture Express Consent is the underpinning of it all.

0 Upvotes
jm
Mitwirkender/Mitwirkende

Is HubSpot violating Canada's anti-spam law?

hi Tom, thanks for the clarification and input!

(emphasis, mine)

I think this is however precisely the problem. As you say, this is how HS works but it is a weakness and has legal implications especially under the GDPR (see end of my comment)

let’s say the contact visits their subscription page a few months later, it’s highly plausible they’ll have forgotten exactly what they subscribed to especially if there is more than one email type to choose from. (since the actual list is hidden from them).

they have 3 options.

  1. Unsub from everything
  • either they don’t care enough about you/want to hear from you at all (fair enough) or
  • they’re annoyed to find out they’re subbed to things they didn’t request and ‘rage quit’ you :frowning:

point being: they have no way of knowing they are not actually subbed to them but at this point that is irrelevant as the very fact those email type boxes are ticked means they are now ‘opt out’

  1. guess the email type (and the list hiding behind it).
    – and unsub from it or exclude everything else they don’t think they want to be subscribed to

  2. leave everything subbed and leave a little puzzled/annoyed/not bothered.

Clearly none of these scenarios offer a good experience.

Point one represents dodgy ground under the EU GDPR (Article 7 and recital 32 to be precise)

“Consent should be given by a clear affirmative act establishing a freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous”

coming back to the sub page to find you are essentially automatically opted in leaves HS customers in the position of giving the weak sounding (but true) reasons of ’ yes, you are automatically subbed to those but we only send based on an internal list which is tied to option 2 in your email types list’

Anyway, that’s my 2 cents worth, hope it helps :slight_smile:

Davin
Mitglied

Is HubSpot violating Canada's anti-spam law?

@Julian_McEwen, I agree 100% with your points here.

This is a BIG problem for us. We have contacts complaining because their Subscription Options page makes it appear to them that we subscribed them to several email types that they did not sign up for. For us it’s painful because these people typically then Unsubscribe from All and we lose the ability to even send them what they signed up for in the first place,

It’s very frustrating and is a reason we’re looking into taking email management away from our use of HubSpot.

@tom_monaghan or other HubSpotters: Is there any movement to fix this?

Thank you,
-Davin

0 Upvotes
JeffSchneider
Teilnehmer/-in | Gold Partner
Teilnehmer/-in | Gold Partner

Is HubSpot violating Canada's anti-spam law?

Hi Lee,

The email types are not your sending lists though. Email types are a way to segment or group the kinds of emails that you send out. If you have a group called “Promotions” then all the different kinds of promotional emails you create, you would select that group so they are bucketed together. But when you prepare an actual promotional email, you don’t send it to an Email Type, you send it to an actual list of subscribers. So somebody that is receiving Promotional emails (the email type) may or may not be on the actual subscriber list that you select to send the email out to.

That said, if someone is on your sending list for promotional emails, but they go into their subscriber preferences and deselect that Promotional email type, you will not be able to send them a promotional email (as long as that promotional email has the Promotions email type selected when it’s created).