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That’s the change that’s going to hit marketers the hardest. The standard practice for years has been that, when you collect a consumer’s email for a content download, you’d automatically add that address to your email list or CRM platform.
the link to download the content, that email address reverts back to private customer data that you have no right to Country Email List use for anything else unless you obtain explicit consent. And you have to get separate consent for each purpose.
There’s an exception for cases where there is a legitimate reason for a business to use the data, but it’s pretty narrow. If a customer purchases a product, for example, you may need the customer’s name, phone number, and home address for shipping purposes. But that doesn’t mean you can start sending catalogs to the address.
Patti
Can marketers just change their notifications to say something like, “By downloading this content, I agree to receive promotional emails from you”?
Kristina
No, not exactly. This is another tricky area. Governments can’t force businesses to give content away to anybody who stumbles across their website. So businesses are within their rights to ask for information like your name, phone number, and email before they grant access to a content download.
BUT — and this is really important to understand — those companies can’t do anything with that data without the consumer’s explicit consent.
You can have a popup that requires consumers to enter personal data before granting them access to content downloads. And you can have a statement on there that asks consumers to check a box if they consent to receiving promotional emails, newsletters, etc. But consumers can say “yes” to the download and “no” to receiving additional communications. If that happens, the consumer still gets the content download, and the company is now carrying additional risk and liability for data they can’t do anything with. I would struggle to come up with a situation in which that would make sense.
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