Requesting marketing consent for GDPR compliance

With the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the European Union’s new privacy law, which came into effect on May 25th, 2018, you as a merchant must ensure that your marketing activities are compliant. The new regulation requires that brands collect affirmative consent that is “freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous” to be compliant.

The Online Store has a new option which allows getting consent on the checkout from a client to receive marketing emails. The option appears as a checkbox.

Ticking the checkbox is not mandatory. Your customer can proceed with her checkout without ticking the checkbox.

Managing the consent checkbox

1. Settings of the checkbox are located under the Control Panel > Marketing > Newsletters > Settings section.

2. Click Newsletters and scroll down to Email sign-up settings.  

3. Make sure the switch next to Request customers' approval for your marketing emails at checkout is toggled to Enabled.

4. Click Edit and customize the text that will be displayed near the checkbox.

You can also edit if the checkbox will be ticked in advance or not.

Please note that for consent to be valid under GDPR, a customer must actively confirm their consent, such as ticking an unchecked opt-in box.  

The status of the checkbox (consent is given or not) is logged and shown at the bottom of the order details page.

When a customer has not given consent

If a customer didn’t give consent to receive marketing emails then:

• A customer’s email will not be exported to a file with customers emails (Marketing > Newsletter > Export contacts)
  
• If the customer is from the European Union country, she will not get reminders about her abandoned orders (My Sales > Abandoned Carts) provided that the customer is from an EU country.