Key facts
- Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) requires clear consent before sending most commercial email to Canadian recipients, and the US CAN-SPAM Act sets its own rules for unsubscribe handling and sender identification, so a vendor sending to both countries needs a written plan for both, not one assumed to cover the other.
- Deliverability, whether your emails actually land in an inbox rather than a spam folder, depends on sender reputation built over time, and a vendor sending a large volume of email too quickly from a new domain can damage deliverability before the program has a chance to work.
- Automated flows (a welcome sequence, a cart abandonment sequence, a quote follow-up sequence) run continuously without a person clicking send each time, and are typically responsible for a large share of email-driven revenue for stores and service businesses that use them well, compared to one-off campaign sends alone.
- Klaviyo, a common email platform for ecommerce stores, and generic email service providers used by service businesses have different strengths, and a vendor should be asked which platform they recommend for your specific business type and why, rather than defaulting to whichever platform they personally prefer.
- List segmentation, sending different messages to different groups based on their behavior or purchase history, generally performs better than one blanket send to an entire list, and a vendor's proposed segmentation strategy is worth reviewing specifically rather than accepting a vague promise to segment.
Scope boundaries
List the specific automated flows you want built: a welcome sequence for new subscribers, a follow-up sequence for quote requests or leads that have not converted, a cart abandonment sequence if you sell online, or an appointment reminder sequence if you take bookings.
State how many one-off campaign sends per month, if any, are in scope beyond the automated flows, and who is responsible for the content and offers inside them, you or the vendor.
State which email platform you currently use or want to use, since Klaviyo, built heavily for ecommerce, and general-purpose email platforms used by service businesses have different feature sets, and a vendor should quote against your actual platform, or recommend one and explain why.
What the vendor must be given
Give the vendor admin access to your email platform account, created and owned under your own business, not a sub-account inside the vendor's own agency-level account that you do not directly control.
Give the vendor access to your website or ecommerce platform if flows need to trigger from on-site behavior (a cart abandonment, a form submission), and to your CRM if lead follow-up sequences need to connect to your actual sales pipeline.
Supply your current subscriber list with accurate consent records if you have an existing list, since a vendor needs to know which contacts have valid consent to email under CASL and CAN-SPAM before sending anything to them.
Ownership and exit clauses
Your email platform account, your subscriber list, and every flow and template built inside it need to stay your property outright, registered under your own business name, not tucked inside the vendor's agency umbrella account.
State that any segmentation logic, tags, or custom properties used to organize your list are documented in plain language, so a future vendor or your own team can understand how contacts are being grouped and why.
Put in writing that the vendor must deliver a full list export and copies of every flow's content and settings on termination, since some platforms make it easy to leave with your data intact and others make it deliberately harder, and this should be settled before you sign, not discovered after.
Milestones and acceptance tests
Set a build milestone for the first round of flows: welcome sequence and lead or cart follow-up sequence, if both are in scope, live and tested with a real test signup or test cart abandonment confirming each email actually sends and looks correct on both desktop and mobile.
Set a compliance milestone alongside the build: confirmation that consent tracking, unsubscribe handling, and sender identification meet CASL requirements for Canadian recipients and CAN-SPAM requirements for US recipients, whichever apply to your list.
Set a 60 to 90 day performance milestone reviewing deliverability (are emails landing in the inbox, not spam) and revenue or leads attributed to email against a stated baseline, since flows need real subscriber volume moving through them before performance is meaningful to judge.
Scoring rubric
Weight compliance and deliverability process heavily: 30 percent the vendor's written compliance and deliverability plan, 25 percent price at the proposed flow and campaign volume, 20 percent relevant experience with your platform and business type, 15 percent segmentation strategy, and 10 percent references.
Score the compliance plan on whether it names CASL and CAN-SPAM specifically if you have contacts in both countries, rather than a generic mention of following best practices without naming the actual rules.
Ask references specifically about their email deliverability, whether their emails reliably reach the inbox, since a vendor with a history of low deliverability for past clients is a warning sign regardless of how good their email design looks.
Questions every bidder must answer
Make every bidder answer in writing: Which specific flows will you build first, and what is the timeline for each? How do you ensure compliance with CASL and CAN-SPAM if I have subscribers in both Canada and the US? What is your process for protecting deliverability, especially if I am sending from a newer domain or a smaller existing list?
Also ask: Will my email platform account be registered under my own business? How do you segment my list, and what data do you use to do it? What happens to my list, my flows, and my templates if I stop working with you?
A bidder who names the specific compliance rules by name and describes a deliverability warm-up process for a newer sending domain is showing real experience running email programs. A bidder who only discusses design and content without mentioning compliance or deliverability is missing half of what makes an email program actually work.
Related questions
Once you have enough subscriber volume or enough complexity, multiple flows, segmentation, ongoing campaigns, that maintaining it well starts competing with your other work. A small list with one simple welcome sequence may not need outside help yet.
It depends on the business type. An ecommerce store commonly benefits from a welcome flow, a cart abandonment flow, and a post-purchase flow at minimum. A service business often benefits most from a lead follow-up sequence and an appointment or quote reminder sequence.
Only if you have subscribers who are Canadian residents. If your list is entirely US-based, CAN-SPAM is the relevant law, but if you have any Canadian contacts, CASL's consent requirements apply to those specific contacts.
Deliverability is whether your emails actually reach the inbox instead of a spam folder. It is affected by sending reputation, list quality, and sending volume patterns, and a program with poor deliverability can look active on paper while barely reaching anyone.
Yes. Welcome sequences, flows, and follow-up automation are built as part of website and marketing engagements here, and the compliance plus deliverability plan this pack calls for match exactly what we would put in place.
SearchPod is a vendor for this kind of work and would answer this RFP; the acceptance tests here are the ones we agree to.
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