It is not a surprise that people do not like to receive unsolicited email communication. Sending unsolicited email has also grown increasingly risky. In recent years, governments in Canada and the European Union (EU) responded to consumer frustrations by instituting strong regulations, including Canada’s Anti-Spam Law (CASL) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In both cases, violations of email provisions can lead to steep fines.
So where does that leave email marketers? How can you confidently and efficiently keep track of customer preferences and comply with regulations?
Before answering these questions, it’s important to understand the difference in the concepts of implicit versus explicit consent. Explicit consent means customers have expressly indicated they want to hear from you. Implicit consent means that customers may have voluntarily provided an email address (as part of a transaction, for example), but they haven’t indicated contact preferences. If you or the email service you rely on for marketing campaigns doesn’t accurately track consent, you can end up in hot water because both Canada and the EU require explicit consent for marketing emails.
That is where Ascent360 comes in. At Ascent360, we make it easy to understand whether a person in your database has expressly said “Yes, please send me emails!” versus simply tracking and providing their email address.
Anytime a person in your Ascent360 database explicitly subscribes to a communication channel, whether it is email, phone, postal or SMS, we update their customer record with the source and date of that consent. That consent is pegged to the person’s customer record and is updated as the person unsubscribes or resubscribes to your emails or other communications.
Generally, someone who has clearly consented to receive emails is going to be a more engaged subscriber (and generate more revenue) than someone who just provided their email without specific consent. By targeting the people who want to hear from your company, you can improve open and click rates to drive revenue.
Ascent360 provides an “Email Permission Status” field to make it as easy as possible to target engaged customers. People who have explicitly consented to receive marketing will show a “yes” in this field, while those who have not specifically indicated their marketing consent will show “unknown.”
When it’s legal, there may be times when you want to send messages to people who have not explicitly consented to receive emails. The Ascent360 database makes this simple with an Email Permission field that tells users whether they are legally allowed to contact individuals in their database.
By default, the Ascent360 database codes people from the EU who have not given explicit consent as a “No” in the email permission field. The platform considers whether customers’ country information is available in the customer record as well as whether email addresses indicate that individuals live in the EU (for example, customername@gmail.es or @gmail.de). Similarly, any Canadian (defined by the country available in the customer record, or the email address ending in “.ca”) is set as “No”, unless they have given explicit consent or have made a purchase within the last two years.
Ultimately, when marketers use the Ascent360 database to send emails to implicitly consented people, they can be sure that they are following the marketing and privacy laws in whichever countries they have customers.
The Ascent360 Audience Selector tool also makes it easy to create audience segments of people who have explicitly consented to receive email. This way, you can send tailored messages to both implicit and explicit subscribers. If you would like a tour of our data-driven marketing platform, you can request a demo below.