Paper Sign-Up Sheets at the Counter

The clipboard by the till

A clipboard sits by the till with a pen on a string and a heading that says Join our mailing list. Over a year it fills with addresses in a dozen kinds of handwriting.

Or there is a fishbowl of business cards for a monthly draw, and after each draw the cards go into a drawer.

Eventually someone types them all into a mailing service and sends a newsletter. That is where the trouble starts.

Nobody can say what each person agreed to, or when. Some thought they were entering a draw, some addresses are misread, and Canada's anti-spam law, CASL, expects a sender to hold consent it can demonstrate.

What a sign-up needs under CASL

• A clear purpose: what people will receive, such as a monthly email.
• Who is asking: the business name and contact details.
• The right to withdraw: a line saying they can unsubscribe at any time.
• A record: the date, the wording and where it was collected.
• A real choice: signing up kept separate from entering a draw.

The fourth is the one paper loses most easily. Under CASL the onus is on the sender to prove consent, and a page with no date and no wording on it proves very little.

Wording the sheet

Print the wording across the top of each page, not handwritten: what people are signing up for, how often, from whom, and that they can unsubscribe at any time.

Two plain sentences are enough, such as "Our monthly email: new stock, events and the occasional offer. Unsubscribe any time," with the business name, address and phone number beneath.

Add columns for name, email address and date, and a tick box for the newsletter if the sheet is also used for a draw or a loyalty card.

Keep the sheet where staff can see it; an unwatched clipboard collects jokes, misspellings and other people's addresses.

Draws and fishbowls

A draw is a good way to meet new customers. On its own, it is not a sign-up for a newsletter.

Someone who drops a card in a bowl has agreed to be entered in the draw. Anything more depends on what the bowl said, and most say Win lunch and nothing else.

A business card handed over does carry a narrow kind of implied consent under CASL, for messages relevant to the person's job. A weekly lunch special rarely qualifies.

Use entry slips instead, with a separate box to tick for the newsletter, and enter everyone in the draw whether they tick it or not.

A worked example

A doula practice run by three partners supports families through pregnancy, birth and the first weeks at home, and keeps a clipboard at its monthly meet-the-doulas evenings for parents who want a free consultation.

Over two years the sheets filled with a few hundred names, and this spring the partners typed them all into a mailing service to announce a new childbirth class.

Complaints followed within a day: spam reports, a parent asking how the practice had her address, and a warning from the mailing service about the complaint rate.

The mechanism was the sheet's purpose. Asking for a consultation is an enquiry, and under CASL an enquiry gives implied consent for only six months.

The sheets had no dates, so nobody could tell which names were still inside that window.

The practice removed everyone who had not since become a client. The new sheet has a date column, a separate newsletter box, the practice's name and address, and a line about unsubscribing.

Ticked entries go into the list within a week of each evening, with the date and the source, and the sheets are filed by month.

Getting the names into the list

Enter paper sign-ups within a week, while the person is still likely a regular and a hard-to-read name may still be remembered.

Most mailing services can record the source and date of each sign-up; a note such as counter sheet, May 2016 is the record you will want if anyone asks.

Enter only people who ticked the box or signed under clear wording, and leave unreadable addresses out, since a guess may belong to someone else.

Then keep the paper. Scan each sheet, file the originals by month, and keep them for as long as those people are on the list.

A welcome email checks the address

Once someone has signed up under clear wording, send a short welcome email straight away. It confirms what they joined and shows whether the address works.

What a welcome email cannot do is rescue a sheet with no wording. Under CASL, a message asking for permission is itself commercial, so it can only go to people who already said yes.

Old sheets in the drawer

Most businesses have a stack of older sheets with no wording at all.

Some of those people may be recent buyers, whose purchases within two years give implied consent for now, but a name on a sheet rarely shows when or whether they bought.

When in doubt, leave them out and invite them again in person. A new sheet with proper wording at the counter is how regulars rejoin, one visit at a time.

A tablet instead of paper

Some shops put a tablet on the counter showing the mailing service's sign-up form, which records the date and wording automatically and removes handwriting from the problem.

Paper still suits a market stall, an event or a busy counter, provided it carries the wording and the record a form keeps by itself.

The counter-case

Receipts, appointment reminders and other transactional messages are treated differently under CASL, and a business that sends only those is not asking for newsletter consent at all.

A small list of regulars may never draw a complaint, but the law does not change with the size of the list.

None of this is legal advice, and a business with a large or sensitive list should get advice of its own.

For any sheet at the counter, though, the advice stands: clear wording, a separate tick box, a dated record, and only the people who agreed go into the list.

A sheet that proves consent

1. Print the wording at the top of the sheet.
2. Add date and tick box columns.
3. Separate the draw from the newsletter.
4. Enter new sign-ups within a week.
5. Record the source and date for each.
6. Scan and file the paper by month.
7. Set aside old sheets with no wording.

Step one is what everything else rests on. Without printed wording, the most careful record-keeping only proves that a name was written on a page.

Where those names should live once they are typed in is covered in a mailing list kept in a spreadsheet on one computer.

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.