When in doubt, and you are relying on consent to market to your customers, express consent is typically your best option. You obtain and document express consent when you explicitly ask your potential customers for permission to send them emails and other marketing content, and they agree, and that agreement is recorded. Unitrade Infotech has ways for you to indicate whether you have obtained express or implied consent from a customer, outlined in more detail below.
There may be circumstances where you can rely on something similar to implied consent for sending emails or promotional content to customers even when subject to the GDPR. This is called a “soft opt-in” where –
- you have obtained their contact details in the context of a sale of a product or service,
- you are sending emails and showing personalized ads relating to similar products or services
- the customer has the ability to opt-out of receiving such emails when they first provided their data when making a purchase and in every subsequent communication sent from you.
You should consult with your legal counsel to determine whether you can rely on the soft opt-in going forward under the GDPR. If you have customers with soft opt-in consent, you can store them as implied consent, but you will need to maintain your own documentation about how you obtained that soft opt-in consent.
Your customers should also be given an easy way to withdraw their consent in order to comply with the GDPR.