GDPR-friendly Mailing Lists via MailChimp

ClearBookings helps MailChimp customers acquire and record consent from customers during checkout to stay GDPR-compliant when distributing marketing content.

You would have to be living under a rock not to know GDPR is about to become law in the EU. It is also safe to say that many organisations, especially smaller operations, will still be feeling bewildered and overwhelmed by the breadth and specificity of the new regulations.

Likely, you have received numerous emails from service providers or publishers whose mailing lists you forgot you were even on, pleading with you to show them some love by consenting to receiving their bits of fluff after May 25th (ClearBookings is amongst that melee)!

What's that about?

Amongst the rules imposed by the GDPR is a requirement that all processing of personally identifying information (or simply 'PII' to those down with the lingo) must be done under an appropriate lawful basis, of which there are six bases identified in the regulations.

The nature of the processing illuminates the choice of lawful basis. In the case of using names and email addresses to distribute marketing content, the most appropriate choice will generally be that of informed consent provided by the customer or subject receiving the content.

In the past, organisations might have slotted something into their terms and conditions of service suggesting that simply by using their service, you consented to receiving marketing materials from them and hence they started spamming you on that basis.

Under the new rules, this would no longer be allowed since, among other things, consent must be both informed and given freely, should not be a pre-condition of signing up to a service, and requires a positive opt-in (no pre-ticked checkboxes any more!).

What's your point?

If you are a MailChimp customer, we can help you manage your mailing list. More importantly, we make acquiring and recording consent from your customers to receive your newsletters or marketing content nice and simple.

Simply visit the MailChimp tab on your Account Settings page in the ClearBookings dashboard to add your MailChimp API key, configure your list settings and enable the customer consent checkbox.

This capability has been present in the ClearBookings dashboard for some time now. However, we have made some changes to ensure you manage your GDPR compliance to the best extent.

Customers are informed up-front as to what will happen to their information when they opt in, as well as their ability to unsubscribe at any time.

We will automatically add a new 'ClearBookings Opt-In Date' mail-merge field to your list, which we populate with the booking date on which a customer first provides consent at checkout.

Since you might want to use MailChimp for more than purely marketing purposes, we also provide choices regarding when you would like customer contacts added to your list - only when consent is given, or always on completion of bookings.

In either case though, we will include the date of consent in your list entry, where consent has been given.

This allows you to create a segment on your MailChimp list containing only those customers that have given consent at checkout for delivering marketing content to, whilst using the broader list for other non-marketing-related purposes.

What if a customer unsubscribes?

Customers who unsubscribe remain in your mailing list with a status of Unsubscribed. These will automatically drop out of any consent segment you may configure like the above examples.

What about non-marketing related customer contacts?

Consent is not always required in order to use your customers' personal details to reach out to them. For example, an event organiser would have a legitimate basis for sending to customers who booked tickets for an event any information regarding that specific event without having expressly acquired consent from those customers.

Where can I learn more?

The UK's Information Commissioner's Office website has a very good guide on the GDPR, which is much easier to follow than the text of the legislation.

MailChimp also provide some handy tools for managing the GDPR compliance of your mailing lists.