GDPR consent: 5 ideas to turn your preference center to your advantage!

The metaphor between relationship marketing and married life is inescapable.

You could say that your customers and your company are in a relationship between consenting adults that will hopefully last longer than a one-time transaction.

For the relationship to endure, everyone must abide by the terms of the contract:

• one entrusts his or her personal data and agreement to receive communications;
• the other commits himself to hold on to this data as the apple of his eye and not to communicate anything without this agreement – and, above all, not to communicate anything in case of disagreement (see our previous article on this subject).

This marriage contract is the preference center.

3. Between total consent and total refusal, propose alternative ways

The opt-down: I want this but not that

If you can’t get your customers and prospects to opt in, you can avoid the global opt out by offering a selective opt down.

Avoid the unsubscribe divorce by offering an extra level of granularity: okay, I’m sick of your event invitations but I’m willing to keep receiving your newsletters (I’m willing to keep hearing about your day at the office if you’ll dispense with Sunday lunches at your mom’s house).

This is called compromise, a real pillar of the relationship.

I need a break

Another way to avoid a break-up is to propose a temporary separation: for three, six or nine months, for example, the customer or prospect no longer wishes to receive anything but agrees to be automatically re-subscribed at the end of this period, during which he or she will have had time to “take stock”, to determine if he or she misses your communications

4. Collect GDPR consent by campaign type rather than by offer category

The question companies often ask is: do I need to collect consent for each family of products and services?

The answer is yes, if your company operates in silos and remains product-oriented (no judgement, right).

But it is still necessary that customers and prospects do not miss an offer that could have interested them at the time of their choice.

However, if your company is customer-oriented, your communications will necessarily be transversal and your speeches will often go beyond the simple framework of the offers.

In this situation, don’t lock yourself into product consent and instead ask your customers and prospects what types of communication they would prefer to receive: invitations to events, announcements about offers, feature articles…

This is the example above “GDPR consent optin optout purposes”.

This gives you the freedom to communicate about all offers or none in particular, and of course, within the chosen communication channels.

We recommend that you treat the offer categories as areas of interest, not subscriptions: the customer will be able to tick off the subjects that interest him/her without this being taken as consent in the strict sense.