The GDPR is coming, and you need to make sure your consent management solution isn’t leaving you vulnerable. This guide will walk you through the process of how to use your CMS.
What Is A Consent Management Solution?
These days, it’s easier to use a CMS for nearly anything. A Consent Management Solution is simply a system that allows you to manage consent requests quickly and efficiently. It can track which companies have requested data from your users and what data is being requested too.
Why Do You Need A Consent Management Solution?
The GDPR has made consent management key to preventing your business from facing the same type of fines that big companies like Google and Facebook are looking at. You can manage all kinds of requests with these solutions, including cookie banners, email subscriptions, marketing permissions, and much more. As long as you have a way to manage what is being requested from your users and verify that they are giving consent, you’re good to go.
Step 1: Finding Your Consent Management Solution
Before you can begin using your CMS, you need to know where it is. If like the majority of businesses, you use a CMS solution including but not limited to Widen, Persistent.io, or Evergage, follow this step.
If your consent management solution did not come from a pre-packaged solution like the ones listed above, skip straight to Step 2.
Step 2: Registering Your Consent Management Solution
You need to register your consent management solution. To do so, go to the homepage of your CMS. You may be met with a splash page or an onboarding sequence. If you are not, continue on to Step 3.
If you were met with either of the above, choose one of the following options:
a: Continue on to the next step, taking note of any directions your consent management solution may provide.
b: Select “No” or “Not Now,” and proceed on to the next step.
Step 3: Note Your Global Consent Setting Options
At this stage in the process, you need to note which options are available to you.
Instructions for this step:
a: Select the option that best describes your preferences. Note that if a single option is not a match, it may be possible to specify an alternate preference. However, each consent management solution handles preferences differently, so you will have to refer back to your consent management solution’s documentation for more information.
- I prefer to receive marketing messages, but only if they are useful and relevant to my interests (i.e., segmented marketing).
- I want to consent to all marketing messages, without customization (i.e., blanket marketing).
- Marketing messages are an unwelcome distraction from my other activities, so I choose not to receive any at all.
It’s important to note that in most cases, the text you enter will be used verbatim in your consent management solution. You should take care when inputting your choices so that they are clear and precise, as this will ensure no ambiguity when it comes to how these preferences are presented in your solution.
Features
With consent management platforms, some companies offer a more customized solution than others. There are three main styles of consent management tools: blanket marketing, segmented marketing, and opt-out. Let’s take a look at what these mean:
Blanket Marketing: I want to receive all relevant communications from marketers and give my consent here
Segmented Marketing: I would like to receive some types of communications from marketers, but not others.
Opt-Out: Please do not market to me.
Several companies have started offering this service, including AdOperate, Axiomatics, and Clearstream. These tools are designed to help you manage data collection more effectively and make life easier for marketers trying to reach you.
Many platforms give you the ability to export all of your collected data in a format that can be understood by other systems, such as sales tools such as Hubspot. This is useful because it means that marketers do not always need 100% consent from end-users to create segments or send emails.
Lastly…
If you would like to sign up for the service, most platforms offer a free trial where you can manage your preferences and see how more easily you can control permissions. You may need to speak with your company’s marketing department (and even this might not always be enough) in order to get more information on what data is being collected and why. Make sure to ask for this in writing.
