Opt-in is generally defined as a situation where customers provide their personal information (e.g., email address or phone number) to an organization, with the expectation that they'll receive marketing communications as a result. The consent given can be implicit or explicit. It's important to understand the differences between these two types of consent, as laws such as CAN-SPAM, CCPA, and GDPR have changed the way customer data and communications are handled.
Note: What consent looks like varies worldwide, so be sure to check the regulations for the regions you're contacting. That said, these definitions of implicit and explicit consent should help you navigate those regulations and help you create successful campaigns.
Implicit consent
Implicit consent is given when individuals provide their information for a business purpose but have not explicitly stated that they want to receive marketing communications. For example, a customer may fill out a "Contact Us" form or complete a purchase through your store.
Explicit consent
Explicit consent is given when you ask an individual for permission to send them marketing materials, and they agree. The future recipient must manually opt-in by taking action. The submission of a form that includes an email address or phone number field is not sufficient for explicit consent. However, the inclusion of an unchecked checkbox that the individual must click is acceptable.
Collecting explicit consent for email
Privy supports an additional email opt-in checkbox that allows a customer to provide explicit consent for email communications when paired with the email field. For compliance reasons, the checkbox should be optional and unchecked by default.
Collecting explicit consent for text
Privy supports an optional text opt-in checkbox that allows customers to provide explicit consent for text communications when paired with the phone field. Any display that includes an opt-in text field will default to display the Disclaimer text only, which will set expectations about receiving future communications from your store. However, best practices for obtaining explicit consent require the Disclaimer text with a checkbox to be selected under the Format options.
Note: It's recommended that you continue to collect email addresses as part of text sign-up forms as this information allows Privy to add the phone number to existing contact profiles via deduplication. A phone number created on its own results in the creation of a new profile.
Consent and imports
A contact's consent is implied when importing contacts as subscribed via a spreadsheet.
Consent's impact on reachability
Privy recommends obtaining explicit consent regardless of your local regulations as it provides you (the sender) more protection concerning privacy and compliance regulations. Additionally, it provides transparency for your customers (the recipient) concerning their future relationship with your marketing communications. That said, it is not required for all channels, so it is important to understand how Privy approaches each sign-up scenario:
| Opt-in checkbox present? | Opt-in checkbox clicked? | Reachability |
| Not present | Not applicable | Mailable/ Textable |
| Present | Yes | Mailable/ Textable |
| Present | No | Unset |
Ultimately, a sign-up event makes an individual mailable or textable unless the contact is suppressed or explicit consent was asked for and not provided. Contacts with the unset state have neither opted in nor opted out of receiving emails and will not be mailable or textable until they've opted-in. Learn more about Privy's reachability statuses here.
Note: A lack of consent in a sign-up event is not treated the same as revoking consent. A contact who is already mailable/textable won't become unmailable/untextable if they fail to check future opt-in checkboxes.