As of May 2018, the way your business handles data will change. If you do not comply with these new regulations you will have no data to market to come 2018. This change has come about because generally speaking, businesses haven’t been paying much attention to the balance between the right to privacy and the right to market to individuals. As a result, the General Data Protection Regulation has changed the game so that consent is now in the consumer’s hands.

So this brings us to the question of ‘what is the double opt-in process?’ Simply, it means that in order to sign up for communications, prospects will have to fill out a form or tick a box and then confirm it was their actions in a further email. The two-step process is being called double opt-in.

Why do we have to double opt-in?

But the next question is why? Well, this new regulation highlights that consent is now in the customer’s hands, so we have to make sure it was them that want our communications.

What we currently do…

At the moment, we work with a soft opt-out approach, which means that the customer has to uncheck a box saying they no longer want to communicate. But according to the new GDPR, this doesn’t give a “positive, affirmative action of consent from the individual”. Therefore, it’s not good enough. Hence why double opt-in has become essential.

Moving forward in the marketing world

To make sure your data complies with the GDPR, you will need to create a confirmation opt-in process, similar to the one CommuniGator have. For example, when a data subject has engaged with our material (let’s say, through a form fill), they will be sent our GDPR opt-in statement asking them to opt-in to our communications. The call to action on this email will send them through to a confirmation action page with a reCAPTCHA. The contact will need to complete the reCAPTHA form in order for the data subject to receive the information they initially engaged for.

The information from the reCAPTCHA form will be fed back to us, allowing us to record and store against the opt-in data market. This means we have the date, IP address and compliance statement of the data subject in our records until such time that it is no longer needed.

If you’re interested more in how our double opt-in process works, you can download our confirmation opt-in guide to get you started.

Better yet, if you want to make sure that you’re compliant for the GDPR, have a look at our checklist we wrote!

 

Better yet, why not look at our GDPR checklist to make sure you’re compliant?