GDPR Compliance Features Overview

Chances are, you’ve probably heard a little bit about this thing called GDPR.

If not, here’s a small recap: On May 25, 2018, the European Union’s new privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) becomes enforceable, regulating the treatment and use of personal data.

Guiding Principles:

Under new GDPR guidelines, data subjects — in this case, your subscribers — have the right to: transparent information about your processing of their data; deletion, correction, portability of their data; and the right to restrict or completely revoke consent for future processing of their data, including objection to any automated decision making that may be in place based on their personal data.

Contact Records:

• Contact Tracking Preference

  • Under the new guidelines, subscribers can opt-out of tracking their behavior. This includes opens, clicks, forwards, shares, clickstream, and Google Analytics.
    
    You can view and edit subscriber's tracking preference in their individual record:
    
    As this is a data field in the contact record, you can also use the "Choose Fields" option on the overall Contacts view to see your list with their tracking preference noted. 
    
    
    
    We'll discuss how users can update their own tracking status (forms) below. In addition to editing tracking preference on a one-off basis (above), you can make adjustments in bulk via API or CSV import (mentioned below). 
    
    
    HOW WILL THIS IMPACT MY ANALYTICS? Note that subscribers who opt out of tracking opens, clicks, forwards, shares, clickstream, and Google Analytics will not show in your reporting for those metrics. When reviewing analytics, keep in mind the percentage of subscribers you have whose behavioral data you may not see. 
    
    HOW WILL THIS IMPACT AUTOMATION AND TRIGGERS? As above, if a subscriber opts out of tracking behavioral data like opens or clicks their actions will not be recorded in behavioral automation flows (ex. automations that include flag events like "opened previous campaign" - it will look as if they did not open the campaign) or behavioral triggered segments (ex. a segment for all openers that clicked a certain link). 
    
    
    

• Export Engagement

  • Should you receive a request for an individual's data, you can now export any tracked behavioral data on the contact record to Excel or PDF. This includes opens, clicks, clickstreams (enabled feature), purchases (enabled feature), shares, forwards, and Google Analytics data if you have that integration enabled.
    
    --> To complete this, find the specific subscriber record on the Contacts dashboard. Click down arrow of Edit button to View Engagement. Click on the specific tab such as Opens or ClickThroughs. On the right hand side, click the three bullets to open a drop down menu. Select how you would like to export the information, either to PDF,  Excel, or XML. 
    
    
    
    

• Export SMS Messages

  • Similarly, if you utilize the SMS program, you can now export a list of SMS messages received by a number in the same manner. Simply navigate to your SMS contact list, choose the specific subscriber record, click "Mailings Sent" and choose to Export.
    
    

Forms:

The updates to the drag-and-drop form editor allow you to make your Subscribe Forms and Preference Centers compliant with options to officially authorize marketing emails and to opt in or out of behavioral tracking. 

• Email and Tracking Authorization

  • You will notice two fields available to add to any Subscribe Form or Preference Center. These are Email Authorization (Allows subscribers to give explicit content to receive emails)and Tracking Authorization (Allows subscribers to give explicit consent for behavior tracking) fields. When added to your form they can be made required fields. Additionally, you can add any language you want to those field descriptions. 
    
    Simply drag in a layout element, add your consent fields, and edit the Field Labels and required checkbox!
    
    

Campaigns:

• Our compliance goes beyond just contact records and forms - we've added a few "behind the scenes" features as well. At the time of campaign send, our system will detect if the recipient has opted out of behavioral tracking. We will then remove the tracking pixels and tracking tags from all emails being sent to recipients that have specified that they do not want their behavior tracked. 

Deleting Contacts and Updating Tracking:

As noted above, under new GDPR guidelines, data subjects have the right to deletion of their data. There are several new ways to delete contacts.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This is an enabled feature that must be requested by the contract signer. Please send feature enablement requests to Support. Once enabled at the account level, the ability to delete contacts will be added to most permission roles. Don't forget to consider which administrators and roles you want to give the ability to delete contacts. 

ONCE YOU CONFIRM CONTACT DELETION, THE JOB COMPLETES IN TWO MINUTES. THE ACTION CANNOT BE UNDONE, SO PLEASE PROCEED WITH CAUTION!

• Delete Contacts

  • One-Off Delete: For a one-off request from a specific subscriber, you can navigate to the individual record on the Contacts page, click on the drop down menu of the Edit button, and choose Delete. A confirmation pop up will appear for you to confirm the delete or cancel. 
    
    
    
    
  • Delete by CSV Import: Once the delete functionality is enabled for your account, you will see the "Remove Contacts" tab on the left hand side of the Contacts dashboard. Upload a CSV that includes the email addresses you would like to delete and confirm your upload. As with the manual delete, this job will run within minutes.
    
    
    
    
  • Delete by API: Our API calls will now include the ability to request a contact to be deleted. 
    
    
    

• Update Tracking Preference
  
  

  As noted above, subscribers are able to update their own tracking preferences if you are using a hosted Subscribe Form or Preference Center. You also have the ability to update tracking preferences by:

  • One-Off Update: From the Contacts dashboard, find the individual subscriber record to change and click on the drop down menu of the Edit button of their record. Under the "Subscription Info" tab you can use the drop down to update a subscriber's tracking preference between "Allowed" and "Not Allowed". 
    
    
    
    
  • CSV Import: You can bulk update multiple users tracking preferences or include tracking preference in your regularly scheduled CSV imports by adding a "Tracking" column to your CSV.
  • Custom mapping may be necessary if you are using a custom FTP. 
    
    
    
    
  • API: Our API calls will now include the ability to request a contact to be deleted.

For any other questions or concerns not answered in this document, please reach out to Client Success or Support.