Collect consent
When growing your omnichannel marketing lists, consent must be top of mind. Learn more about what consent is and how to adequately collect consent for email, text messaging, and mobile push notifications in the video below.
Differentiate explicit and implicit consent
You must collect explicit consent from subscribers before messaging them. Let’s define what explicit consent is and how it differs from implicit consent; that way, you can feel confident that you’re collecting adequate permissions ahead of sending.
Explicit consent
Collecting explicit consent, also called express consent, is always best practice. This is given when someone directly tells you they want to receive marketing from your client’s brand.
When you have explicit consent, you can have peace of mind sending to these subscribers until they opt out.
Examples of when someone gives a brand explicit marketing consent:
- Signing up through a form with clearly set expectations.
- Selecting a box at checkout that permits you to send them marketing messages.
- Opting into push notifications via a permission prompt when opening the app.
Implicit consent
Implicit, often called implied, consent is given indirectly by someone; thus, we strongly advise against collecting this.
When you rely on implicit consent, you risk major compliance issues, as laws vary by location and channel.
Examples of when someone gives a brand implicit marketing consent:
- Signing in to access-gated resources (e.g., article, Wi-Fi, etc.).
- Giving you a business card in person without vocally agreeing to marketing.
- Buying or leasing a service, good, or product from your client’s brand.
Further considerations
Along with collecting explicit consent from subscribers, keep the following best practices in mind to maintain compliance over time.
Follow local laws and compliance best practices
Before sending messages in a new region, familiarize yourself with local laws and regulations for each channel you use. For example, if you message subscribers in the EU, you should keep GDPR in mind to collect adequate consent from subscribers and only show them exactly what they have opted in to receive.
Note: We recommend that you consult with legal counsel prior to sending texts or if you have any questions around marketing consent across different regions. This will help you to ensure that you remain compliant in the countries your subscribers are based in.
Learn more about local laws and regulations. In particular, review text message compliance best practices to prevent hefty fines and improve message deliverability.
Maintain 1 main list per channel
It’s best practice to have 1 main list for each channel.
Doing so helps you:
- Maintain good data hygiene.
- Access a list growth report for each channel.
- Simplify the list cleaning process.
Klaviyo offers pre-built email newsletter and text messaging lists for any new account. Use these to save you time right from the start.
For push, you will need to manually build this list once you begin collecting push notification consent. That said, check in with your app developer to ensure you are saving contact information from this channel correctly first. If your team’s developer has not sent push contact information into Klaviyo, then you should instead create a push notification segment as your source of truth, focusing on anyone who has enabled push notifications via your app.
Enable double opt-in
When you enable double opt-in for a given list, then a new subscriber will be prompted to confirm their subscription before being subscribed.
Note: While this is a best practice for email, it is a non-negotiable for text messaging. Carriers often require double opt-in, particularly for abandoned cart text messages.
Make it simple to unsubscribe
While it might sound counterintuitive, making it easy for someone to unsubscribe from your marketing is crucial.
Why? By allowing someone to easily unsubscribe from each channel, you will:
- Remain compliant with regional sending laws.
- Prevent excess spam complaints and delivery concerns.
- Increase consumer trust in your brand.
- Inform your sending strategy, as you’ll see more reliable unsubscribe rates.