The consent centre is a tool that allows businesses to manage the consents of their contacts on collecting, handling and using personal data. It helps to comply with the laws concerning data protection, like General Data Protection Regulation in Europe or Canada's anti-spam legislation C-28. The consent centre allows contacts to manage their mailing preferences by choosing the communication types they wish to receive and the data the enterprise is authorized to collect and handle. By using the consent center, businesses may increase the trust of their target audience while respecting data protection laws.
Concretely, the consent centre is used to subscribe your contacts to communications (emails, SMS) they are interested in receiving. For example, you could have a communication type for your promotions and another for your newsletter. A contact could be subscribed to your newsletter but unsubscribe to your promotions. You allow your contacts to personalize what they receive, and providing options benefits their satisfaction and interest in your content. In this fashion, you might optimize your mailing frequency and increase the impact of your messages and campaigns.
In the case of administrative type (like a purchase receipt or reservation), consent is not necessary.
Step 1: Create communication Types
To categorize your messages according to their function (newsletter, promotions, events, etc.), you will need to set up communication types. By segmentizing your communications, you give personalization options to your contacts.
Step 2: Configure Consents
There are 2 types of consents you can create with the consent centre. Depending on the requirements of your project, choose which consent type suits your needs.
The organisations have to get explicit consent before sending marketing or promotionnal emails in order to respect the data protection laws, like GDPR in Europe or Law C-28 in Canada. In Canada, there is an exception when using implied consents.
Explicit consents (opt-in) |
| The opt-in of a contact refers to a person's explicit consent to receive emails or other types of communication from an enterprise or organization. Opt-in is an active process and should not be confused with opt-out (unsubscribing), a passive subscription process where you must express your wish not to receive emails. Opt-in is generally acquired with an opt-in form. The Opt-In management module allows your contacts to personalize the communication types they wish to receive instead of deactivating all of them. To configure opt-ins, you have to create opt-in fields. |
Implied consents (Canada only) |
Implied consents can be used in Canada, but they are not allowed in Europe. Unlike opt-in, implied consent is the right to send messages, which you have obtained indirectly following a contact’s action (for example, purchase or information request) or based on an existing business relationship. These consents have a time limit defined by the CASL (Canada's anti-spam legislation). If you use this module, make sure to respect this law. Creating implied consents requires you to apply rules on conditions and duration. Consent proof is stocked in history. When a contact withdraws his explicit consent, the implied consent will also be removed. To configure an implied consent, you must define the conditions for that implied consent. If you want contacts with implied consent to subscribe, you could configure the interception process and activate message interception. This feature allows you to show a consent form to your recipients when they click on any links in a message to offer them a subscription they do not have. If you have added opt-in fields in the project and wish to confirm the contacts' consents, interception is an efficient way to get their authorization. |
Step 3: Connect the Consents to a Communication Type
The last step is to connect the opt-ins to a communication type. When a contact is assigned to a subscription, he becomes admissible to receive communications linked with this subscription. If you have implied consents, you have to connect them with a communication type.
By linking a consent to a communication type, you filter recipients and avoid sending communications to contacts that did not consent. Using the consents module provides an additional layer of protection to respect permissions from your contacts and the laws.
To start, go to Project → Consent Management and choose an opt-in (or implied consent) you want to connect to your communication types:
Then, in the Consent Assignation window, check the opt-ins or implied consents that your contacts need to receive your communication types (you can check more than one):
Once assigned, the consents will appear in the consent manger and as well in the configuration for the communication type.
Your consent centre is now ready! You can send messages to your subscribers!
Next Step
Do not forget to provide your contacts the option to unsubscribe by inserting a link in your communications. An opt-out form is available by default in your project, but you can personalize it.
To assign opt-ins to your contacts, the most common method is to create an opt-in form or a profile update form.