7 good practices for your preference center

Preference Centre best practices and example at Merlin/Leonard

How to receive feedback? 4 avenues to explore :

1. Insert a survey on your unsubscribe page. It should be short but relevant enough.
2. Make the survey optional. The user should not have the impression that his hand is being forced.
3. Allow customers or prospects who unsubscribe to give their feedback in a free text field.
4. Facilitate exchanges by inserting a direct link to your contact form.

5 – Differentiate between consent and visitor preference management

The collection of consent: an obligation imposed by the CNIL and the GDPR

Since the entry into force of the French Data Protection Act, simple information on the use of personal data is no longer sufficient. As the CNIL reminds us, in certain situations, it is mandatory to obtain the visitor’s consent. Since 2018, the GDPR has further reinforced this notion of collecting consent. It is therefore time to adapt your tools to comply .

Thus, you must expressly ask for the visitor’s consent if you use cookies or if you want to prospect by email. According to the recommendations of the CNIL, each recipient of a newsletter must give his consent, as soon as he shares his email address. He must also be able to choose how his personal data is used and to whom it is communicated.

As a reminder, the collection of consent guarantees to prospects and customers a better control over their personal data by allowing them to :

• understand how their personal data is processed
• freely choose to accept or not this use
• change their mind at any time

After consent, preferences

Once the wedding is over, it’s time to get to know each other better and deepen the relationship. Once consent has been obtained, you can ask your prospects to indicate their preferences. These preferences concern the use of their personal data, of course, but also the way you will communicate with them.

Thus to respect the good practices enacted by the CNIL and the GDPR compliance, the user must express his preferences:

• If you want to share his contact information with business partners. He must know which brands you work with and have the choice to say yes or no, depending on the advertisers;
• They must also be able to express their preferences in terms of communication. They should also be able to specify their communication preferences, such as whether they want to receive a newsletter, commercial offers, your latest blog posts, etc. They can also select the frequency of the mailings and their centers of interest.

The M/L Preference Center allows the user to easily set preferences such as subscriptions and domain interests

6 – Recognize the visitor who says no and the one who says nothing

By collecting consent by mode of communication through a value list, it is possible to send emails to customers or prospects who have agreed and to those who have not specified their choice. This type of use of opt-in in the preference center is validated by the CNIL for B2B companies and services, provided that one can unsubscribe easily and at any time and that my communication can interest the recipient.

7 – Allow the exercise of the right to information and the right to be forgotten

• To allow the complete erasure of personal data (right to be forgotten);
• Inform users about the use of their personal data (right to information).

The GDPR preference center allows to meet these challenges by inviting users to make their choice in this matter. By accepting the privacy policy of a company, the user consents to the use of his personal data. But not consenting means the right to be forgotten. And in this case, the data shared by the user will absolutely have to be anonymized.

Merlin/Leonard helps companies to answer the problems related to digital marketing, marketing automation, lead generation or growth hacking. Do not hesitate to contact us to be accompanied in your GDPR compliance and transform your preference center into a real management and loyalty tool.