Last week the agency I work for had some mandatory training on Canada’s recent anti-spam legislation to give our consultants the facts we need to counsel our clients and deliver programs aligned with the bill. And look, I hate spam as much as the next guy, but I found myself rolling my eyes incessantly as we were walked through the fundamentals of this new set of laws. It felt like Canada has gone way too far in overcompensating for their late arrival to the anti-spam party.

And yet as much as I may disagree with some of the details making up these laws, I also found myself oddly comforted by the change in how business are being urged/mandated to communicate with their customers. What comforts me? Three things:

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Breaking an inherently inefficient model

Anyone who’s read my rants in the past can appreciate how opposed I am to any blanket messaging – commercial or otherwise. In my view, virtually every type of mass-broadcasted message we consume would serve everyone better with a little more targeting and less shotgun-inspired thinking. A shockingly high portion of marketers, but also content producers (TV, radio, I’m looking at you) are still operating under this absurd model. Ill-targeted content that results in abysmal click-through rates, impressions, and engagement. So I’m all for change – even if forced – if it means it pushes us forward and away from such a flawed way of doing things.

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Improving consumer sentiment for direct marketing

Through years of abuse, spam and junk mail have become so commonplace that most of us view it as a necessary evil. A cost of doing business or merely living in an age where technology is so tightly intertwined with our daily lives. The new guidelines for obtaining consent not only weed out a whole lot of unnecessary/unwanted noise but also double as a way for consumers to begin reestablishing faith in direct marketing. It’s a way to trigger a much-needed reboot on the way we have come to dismiss communications of this type. And as messages become more tailored and relevant, I imagine our appetite to opt-in to brand messages that truly matter to us will grow. Which leads me to the third point:

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An opportunity for brands to become more relevant – and responsible

When marketers have gained consent from a consumer, they’ve been given a gift. But it’s probably not the gift you’re thinking. No, consent doesn’t equate to a free pass or license to assault the customer with every promotional message we have. The gift is that we have a customer that is interested - on some level,- to continue a relationship. This may range from the superficial (coupons and discounts) to the more rewarding (brand advocates with true affinity to your offering). Depending on where each customer sits on this spectrum, it presents us with the opportunity to nurture the relationships and build trust appropriately. As a marketer, the gift is that we’ve been given the opportunity to focus on on the quality of the relationships rather than the number of addresses in our recipient database.

There are many aspects of the legislation that bother me. I don’t think, for example, it’s the government’s place to define what a “family member” is and to draw seemingly arbitrary lines between parents, siblings, aunts, uncles and so on. In my opinion, however, the bigger picture changes here and the potential impact it represents for marketers is both inspiring and exciting. And it’s long overdue. Yes, I look forward to using this opportunity to help clients maximize the gift their customers have given them. But more than this, I am encouraged by what this move represents in creating trust and comfort among customers concerning their relationships with brands. It’s a first – and necessary – step to showing consumers the benefits of opt-in, highly personalized and relevant communications and breaking the whole spam mentality that got us into this mess.