Email Marketing for Contractors
Email marketing for contractors, built compliant from the first send.
Most home-service email lists quietly go stale, and most contractors never learn why until a complaint or an audit forces the question. Implied consent has a clock on it, in both Canada and the US, and almost nobody tracks it.
Email marketing for contractors means building and sending from a list with real consent that's tracked and current, not just collected once and forgotten. Canada's anti-spam law (CASL) treats implied consent, the kind you get from an existing customer relationship, as time-limited: roughly two years for a customer, six months for a bare inquiry. The US CAN-SPAM Act requires every commercial email to honour an opt-out within ten business days. A contractor serving both countries is exposed to both laws on the same list.
By the numbers
- Implied consent under CASL is time-limited, generally around two years for an existing customer relationship and about six months for a bare inquiry that never became a job, after which sending requires express consent again. CASL DOCUMENTED
- Every commercial electronic message under CASL needs three things: sender identification, a current mailing address plus a phone number, email or website valid for at least 60 days, and an unsubscribe mechanism honoured within 10 business days at no cost. CASL DOCUMENTED
- CAN-SPAM requires the same 10-business-day opt-out honour in the US, plus an opt-out mechanism that keeps working for at least 30 days after the message was sent, and a "From" line that accurately identifies the actual sender. FTC DOCUMENTED
- CAN-SPAM penalties run up to $53,088 per individual email that violates the Act, not per campaign, which is why a single bad send to a stale list is a real exposure, not a technicality. FTC DOCUMENTED
What does contractor email marketing include?
- A consent audit before anything gets sent. Every contact on the list gets checked against its actual consent type and date, and anything past its implied-consent window gets moved to a re-permission sequence or dropped, not sent to anyway.
- Compliant infrastructure by default: sender identification, a valid mailing address, and a working unsubscribe link honoured inside the legal window, built into every template rather than bolted on when someone complains.
- A cadence built around real job events, a completed job, a review request, a seasonal reminder, not a generic weekly newsletter sent whether or not there's anything worth saying.
- Segmentation by relationship, not just by list. A current customer inside their consent window gets different treatment from a two-year-old inquiry that needs re-permission first.
- A monthly compliance and performance review, so the list stays inside the legal windows above as it ages, not just clean on the day it launched.
The review-request emails this runs on connect directly to the review system already covered on this site: the ask email is timed the same way the in-person ask is, right after the job, not weeks later.
What most contractor email lists get wrong
Implied consent from a past job doesn't last forever. Roughly two years for a customer relationship, about six months for a quote request that never closed, and after that window a send without renewed consent is exactly the exposure CASL exists to penalize, even if the original relationship was completely legitimate.
Both CASL and CAN-SPAM treat the unsubscribe mechanism as mandatory, not a courtesy: honoured within 10 business days, at no cost, in every commercial message. A list without one, or with one that quietly doesn't work, is a violation on every single send it's missing from.
A two-year customer and a six-month-old inquiry are on different legal clocks and need different treatment. Mixing them into one undifferentiated list means either under-sending to people you could legitimately reach, or over-sending past a window that's already closed.
Sources
- Government of Canada (Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada), Getting consent to send email: express vs. implied consent under CASL, the roughly two-year and six-month implied-consent windows, and the required identification, contact and unsubscribe elements.
- Federal Trade Commission, CAN-SPAM Act: A Compliance Guide for Business: the 10-business-day opt-out honour requirement, the 30-day minimum opt-out mechanism validity, accurate sender identification, and the per-email penalty amount.
This is general guidance, not legal advice. Anti-spam law changes, and exact consent windows and penalty amounts should be confirmed against the current regulator guidance for your specific situation.
Questions we get
Frequently asked questions
How long can I keep emailing a past customer without asking again?
Under CASL, implied consent from an existing customer relationship runs for roughly two years from the last transaction. A quote request that never became a job carries a shorter window, about six months. After that, sending without renewed express consent is the exact exposure the law targets.
Do I need to worry about both CASL and CAN-SPAM?
If you email contacts in both Canada and the US, yes. CASL covers messages sent from or received in Canada; CAN-SPAM covers commercial email in the US. A contractor working both sides of the border is exposed to both laws on the same list, and the stricter requirement generally governs.
What has to be in every marketing email, legally?
Under both laws: accurate sender identification, a real contact method (CASL specifically requires a current mailing address), and a working unsubscribe mechanism that gets honoured within 10 business days at no cost to the recipient.
What happens if I keep emailing someone after they unsubscribe?
It's a violation under both laws, and under CAN-SPAM specifically it's assessed per email, not per campaign, with penalties running up to roughly $53,000 per message in the US. The opt-out mechanism has to actually work and has to be honoured inside the legal window, not just exist.
Can you guarantee our emails won't land in spam?
No inbox placement can be guaranteed, by us or anyone else. What we control is the part that's actually controllable: a consent-clean list, compliant infrastructure, and a sending pattern that doesn't read as spam to begin with, which is the biggest lever anyone actually has.
Read next
Where to go from here
Next step
Not sure how old your list's consent actually is?
A free assessment of your current list against CASL and CAN-SPAM's consent windows, or a clean, compliant build if you're starting fresh.
Or call 778-200-8644 · Built compliant to CASL and CAN-SPAM from the first send · No guaranteed rankings