GDPR handling of consent to marketing

We are not associating "not opt-in" to "unsubscribe".  Rather, we're just making sure that - unless the person has "opt-in = true" - they won't receive marketing emails.  Actually, in our case, our main opt-in field - the one that appears on all of our forms - is an opt-in to all marketing emails.  We also have a preference center that we drive folks to from the "unsubscribe" link in our emails - where they can opt-in/out of specific types of content, instead of unsubscribing fully. 

So what we have done is create a series of "master" opt-in smart lists in our global/default partition (we have 23 country lead partitions) - which are then shared across all workspaces.  Each smart list is aligned to our preference center groups, along with an all-up opt-in smart list:

• Opted-in to all marketing emails
• Opted-in to campaign-related emails
• Opted-in to event invitations
• Opted-in to country newsletters
• Opted-in to blog updates

Then for every email send, we must filter against the appropriate audience smart list (in addition to whatever other filters are necessary).  These filters are baked into all of our program templates to ensure no one forgets to include them.  And since the country partitions only have access to their country data, there's no need to create these smart lists within each partition.  Only those people within those countries will be exposed and qualify for any send campaign in each country workspace.

Unlike Dan, we prefer to associate the 2 fields, so that we are sure that we remain error proof in case a local user forgets to use an opt-in list.

But we do that association with some JS at form level, not with smart campaigns.

We also have a some preference centers that enable people to fine tune their opt-in.

So in fact, the "Opt-in" field is only used on lead capture forms such as event registration, content download or contact forms. And it is shown only for new comers (unknown leads). In these forms, if the person opts in, the in the form background, the unsubscribed field will be unchecked.

The preference center does not show the "global" opt-in field but rather the options and the unsubscribe field (which corresponds to the "subscribe from all communications" option). in the PC, if the person opts out, in the form background, the opt-in field will be unchecked.

-Greg

Don't unsubscribe someone just because they don't opt in, that should only be used for an affirmative "don't talk to me anymore". Use a separate field to track what level of permission you have (mine is called "permission status"). That way you can have "affirmatively opted in", "affirmatively opted out", "nebulous gray area where they didn't say yes or no and two groups of this, one where I have the right to talk to people (ex: USA people) and one where I don't have the right to talk to people (ex: Italian people).

I can't show you my full workflow (sorry) that tells me logically how each person falls into each bucket, but here's the bottom of that decision tree and the colored boxes are my permission statuses. I made it pretty straightforward in terms of color what is good vs. what is bad , but mostly because this document is for non-Marketo people to understand what our permission means.

I'd recommend something like this so you can logically group people.

Hi guys,

but surely this is GDPR non-compliance...? You say that you add a person's record to your database and if they don't opt in then you don't email them...right?

But surely the Opt-in relating to GDPR isn't about whether you can email them or not, it's about whether you have their consent to process their data - which if they don't opt in, then you don't have their consent, so you can't store/process the data - whether you send emails to it or not. So surely the people who do not opt-in - after a certain number of tries, or a certain period of time passes - must be deleted...not flagged as suspended or unsubbed...