keeping track of date a prospect agrees to privacy policy
We're trying to figure out how to keep track of the date a prospect originally agreed to our privacy policy. We host many forms on our site for downloading content, webinar registration, general information, etc. We're trying to figure out how to avoid overwriting the agreement date when someone fills out the next form, and again opts into our policy (which we require on every form). Is the only answer to create progressive forms for the privacy opt-in? Or is there a maintenance program that would do the trick? Or something else?
Thanks!
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Anne Mullaney
VP Marketing, Cutter Consortium
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Comments
4 comments
You have my sympathy when it comes to this particular challenge, as we have a similar setup at my company.
Something I found important to keep in mind is that consent has to be specific and granular. Technically, each of the activities that you are getting people to sign up for (e.g. participate in a webinar, receive a newsletter, receive a series of whitepapers) are best thought of as separate activities they should be consenting to individually. It is not necessarily good practice to be effectively bundling a person's consent together and saying 'you read our privacy policy one time, therefore we send you all types of communications, indefinitely'. Also, from a marketing point of view, it shows you care about the customer where you let them opt in to receive only the types of communication they wish to receive, rather than sending them absolutely everything you ever create, just because they submitted a form one time. So it might actually serve you better from a compliance point of view and a customer relations point of view to have people passing through separate 'campaigns', each of which being for a defined period of time.
At my company we have created a communications preference management process, which you can read about in detail here. This process sits alongside our 'campaigns' and is the means by which we get people to consent to receive future marketing communications beyond the lifespan of any specific campaign. The list that these contacts are collected in serves as our 'master' consent list and enables us to communicate with people on a longer-term basis.
Apologies for a long post, but hopefully it will give you some ideas for different approaches to this challenge.
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Sion Stedman
Idox Software Ltd
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Original Message:
Sent: 03-28-2018 15:10
From: Anne Mullaney
Subject: keeping track of date a prospect agrees to privacy policy
Hi,
We're trying to figure out how to keep track of the date a prospect originally agreed to our privacy policy. We host many forms on our site for downloading content, webinar registration, general information, etc. We're trying to figure out how to avoid overwriting the agreement date when someone fills out the next form, and again opts into our policy (which we require on every form). Is the only answer to create progressive forms for the privacy opt-in? Or is there a maintenance program that would do the trick? Or something else?
Thanks!
------------------------------
Anne Mullaney
VP Marketing, Cutter Consortium
------------------------------
The simplest way would be to reference that person's Activity History in Act-On. You can see all the forms they've submitted, along with dates, on the Forms tab. Then if you needed to, you can download that form submission list.
Like Sion, I'm guessing you also need a way to save that data in a more easily accessible way across all contacts. We use Salesforce as our CRM, which our Act-On forms write to. If you have a connected CRM as well, you can create a field that catches the first submit date, and then use either form settings in Act-On (Salesforce has options for only overwriting blank fields, so it would only capture the first policy acceptance), or use workflow rules in CRM to only update that field when blank. A capable CRM admin should be able to get that set up with help from you or another person on your marketing team.
You could get super creative with Automated Programs. People can only enter those once, so if you have a master contact list, create a segment based on 'submitted any form', then added that segment to an Automated Program, the Program itself would serve as a log of the first time anyone in your list submitted a form.
No matter what you do there are caveats, but there are some options depending on the size of your database, your tech stack, and how you structure your lists in Act-On.
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Leah Bartell
Riskalyze Inc.
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Original Message:
Sent: 03-28-2018 15:10
From: Anne Mullaney
Subject: keeping track of date a prospect agrees to privacy policy
Hi,
We're trying to figure out how to keep track of the date a prospect originally agreed to our privacy policy. We host many forms on our site for downloading content, webinar registration, general information, etc. We're trying to figure out how to avoid overwriting the agreement date when someone fills out the next form, and again opts into our policy (which we require on every form). Is the only answer to create progressive forms for the privacy opt-in? Or is there a maintenance program that would do the trick? Or something else?
Thanks!
------------------------------
Anne Mullaney
VP Marketing, Cutter Consortium
------------------------------
Thanks for your advice, suggestions and description of what you're doing! We started to create a form to 'replace' the existing 'default' subscription management form, using the same data structure. We'd like this form to sit on a landing page so people can access it via our web site. (As far as I can tell, the default subscription management tool can only be accessed via email message. Is there something we're missing?)
The next hurdle we're up against is how to move the form data to the subscription management list. In our new form, we made the value for checking off the communications the client/prospect wants 'true'. But the subscription management list suppresses 'false'/unchecked items from outbound segments. Our plan is to add a maintenance program that adds 'false' to empty fields and then append the subscription management list. How are you dealing with this?
Thanks again!
Anne
------------------------------
Anne Mullaney
VP Marketing, Cutter Consortium
------------------------------
-------------------------------------------
Original Message:
Sent: 03-28-2018 16:27
From: Sion Stedman
Subject: keeping track of date a prospect agrees to privacy policy
Hi @Anne Mullaney
You have my sympathy when it comes to this particular challenge, as we have a similar setup at my company.
Something I found important to keep in mind is that consent has to be specific and granular. Technically, each of the activities that you are getting people to sign up for (e.g. participate in a webinar, receive a newsletter, receive a series of whitepapers) are best thought of as separate activities they should be consenting to individually. It is not necessarily good practice to be effectively bundling a person's consent together and saying 'you read our privacy policy one time, therefore we send you all types of communications, indefinitely'. Also, from a marketing point of view, it shows you care about the customer where you let them opt in to receive only the types of communication they wish to receive, rather than sending them absolutely everything you ever create, just because they submitted a form one time. So it might actually serve you better from a compliance point of view and a customer relations point of view to have people passing through separate 'campaigns', each of which being for a defined period of time.
At my company we have created a communications preference management process, which you can read about in detail here. This process sits alongside our 'campaigns' and is the means by which we get people to consent to receive future marketing communications beyond the lifespan of any specific campaign. The list that these contacts are collected in serves as our 'master' consent list and enables us to communicate with people on a longer-term basis.
Apologies for a long post, but hopefully it will give you some ideas for different approaches to this challenge.
------------------------------
Sion Stedman
Idox Software Ltd
------------------------------
Original Message:
Sent: 03-28-2018 15:10
From: Anne Mullaney
Subject: keeping track of date a prospect agrees to privacy policy
Hi,
We're trying to figure out how to keep track of the date a prospect originally agreed to our privacy policy. We host many forms on our site for downloading content, webinar registration, general information, etc. We're trying to figure out how to avoid overwriting the agreement date when someone fills out the next form, and again opts into our policy (which we require on every form). Is the only answer to create progressive forms for the privacy opt-in? Or is there a maintenance program that would do the trick? Or something else?
Thanks!
------------------------------
Anne Mullaney
VP Marketing, Cutter Consortium
------------------------------
Hi Anne
Another requirement of GDPR is that it should be as easy for a person to opt out or change their preferences as it was for them to opt in. By doing as you are planning with the form (that is, placing it on a page that can be accessed at any time), you are helping to meet this requirement. We are doing exactly the same at my company – there is a link on our website titled 'Manage your preferences' that lets people revisit their preferences. We also give them the option to opt out on this page by linking them to a form they can submit, which adds their email address to the Act-On master Opt Out list.
Also, in the footer of every email sent, we include two links – one link for the person to manage their preferences, at the preferences page; and one link that is the default Act-On opt out link:
As our own preference management process will satisfy our GDPR compliance needs, we have not turned on Subscription Management, so I have not looked into whether it is possible to link people directly to the Subscription Management page. But what you are planning to do satisfies GDPR better than Subscription Management in any case; and, what's more, you can customise your form and web page as much as you wish – the default Subscription Management page is rather limited.
That said, I don't see any reason why you couldn't have an automated program feed information to or update your existing Subscription Management list. As you describe, fields can then be updated with whatever information they need to hold.
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Sion Stedman
Idox Software Ltd
------------------------------
-------------------------------------------
Original Message:
Sent: 04-02-2018 10:05
From: Anne Mullaney
Subject: keeping track of date a prospect agrees to privacy policy
Hi Sion,
Thanks for your advice, suggestions and description of what you're doing! We started to create a form to 'replace' the existing 'default' subscription management form, using the same data structure. We'd like this form to sit on a landing page so people can access it via our web site. (As far as I can tell, the default subscription management tool can only be accessed via email message. Is there something we're missing?)
The next hurdle we're up against is how to move the form data to the subscription management list. In our new form, we made the value for checking off the communications the client/prospect wants 'true'. But the subscription management list suppresses 'false'/unchecked items from outbound segments. Our plan is to add a maintenance program that adds 'false' to empty fields and then append the subscription management list. How are you dealing with this?
Thanks again!
Anne
------------------------------
Anne Mullaney
VP Marketing, Cutter Consortium
------------------------------
Original Message:
Sent: 03-28-2018 16:27
From: Sion Stedman
Subject: keeping track of date a prospect agrees to privacy policy
Hi @Anne Mullaney
You have my sympathy when it comes to this particular challenge, as we have a similar setup at my company.
Something I found important to keep in mind is that consent has to be specific and granular. Technically, each of the activities that you are getting people to sign up for (e.g. participate in a webinar, receive a newsletter, receive a series of whitepapers) are best thought of as separate activities they should be consenting to individually. It is not necessarily good practice to be effectively bundling a person's consent together and saying 'you read our privacy policy one time, therefore we send you all types of communications, indefinitely'. Also, from a marketing point of view, it shows you care about the customer where you let them opt in to receive only the types of communication they wish to receive, rather than sending them absolutely everything you ever create, just because they submitted a form one time. So it might actually serve you better from a compliance point of view and a customer relations point of view to have people passing through separate 'campaigns', each of which being for a defined period of time.
At my company we have created a communications preference management process, which you can read about in detail here. This process sits alongside our 'campaigns' and is the means by which we get people to consent to receive future marketing communications beyond the lifespan of any specific campaign. The list that these contacts are collected in serves as our 'master' consent list and enables us to communicate with people on a longer-term basis.
Apologies for a long post, but hopefully it will give you some ideas for different approaches to this challenge.
------------------------------
Sion Stedman
Idox Software Ltd
Original Message:
Sent: 03-28-2018 15:10
From: Anne Mullaney
Subject: keeping track of date a prospect agrees to privacy policy
Hi,
We're trying to figure out how to keep track of the date a prospect originally agreed to our privacy policy. We host many forms on our site for downloading content, webinar registration, general information, etc. We're trying to figure out how to avoid overwriting the agreement date when someone fills out the next form, and again opts into our policy (which we require on every form). Is the only answer to create progressive forms for the privacy opt-in? Or is there a maintenance program that would do the trick? Or something else?
Thanks!
------------------------------
Anne Mullaney
VP Marketing, Cutter Consortium
------------------------------
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