Why marketing consent matters
Marketing consent helps ensure your communications reach people who want to receive them while supporting sender reputation and protecting recipients’ data and communication preferences. Depending on where your organization and customers are located, you may also be subject to data protection and marketing regulations such as GDPR in the European Union, CAN-SPAM in the United States, and CASL in Canada. Dynamics 365 Real-Time Marketing includes consent management functionality that can help organizations support their compliance requirements. A general best practice is to give contacts a clear way to opt in to marketing communications and an easy way to opt out or revoke that consent.
Consent information on a contact record
A contact record in Dynamics 365 contains several fields related to marketing and data protection. These can include:
- Whether marketing materials should be sent
- The contact's consent preferences
- Data protection information
- Whether tracking of marketing interactions is permitted
- Contact preferences such as whether bulk email is allowed
One particularly important setting for marketing communications is the Bulk Email preference. If bulk email is allowed, the contact can receive applicable marketing communications. If it is set to Do Not Allow, the contact can be excluded from receiving those communications even if they have been included in a segment or list. These settings also provide a place to manually update a contact's preferences if they revoke their consent.
Understanding contact point consent
Real-Time Marketing stores consent per destination and per channel. An email address or phone number used to reach someone is considered a contact point. Consent associated with these destinations is known as contact point consent. This allows someone to have different preferences for different communication channels. For example, a person might choose to receive marketing emails but not text messages. Contact point consent also enables Real-Time Marketing to enforce consent across different types of audience records, including contacts and leads.
Using compliance profiles
Consent preferences are organized using compliance profiles. A compliance profile can act as the consent hub for a particular area of your organization. Separate profiles can be useful when your company operates:
- Multiple lines of business
- Different brands
- Regional or global offices
- Areas with different regulatory requirements
Each profile can have its own preference center and purposes associated with it. Messages such as emails and text messages are associated with a compliance profile and an applicable purpose. To access compliance profiles, open Settings and find Compliance Profiles under Customer Engagement. When creating a new profile, you can configure it with a preference center and provide the applicable physical company address.
Ways to establish consent
There are several ways to establish consent in Real-Time Marketing.
1. Manually create consent records
You can manually add consent records for email addresses or phone numbers. When creating the record, you can specify information such as:
- The email address or phone number
- Consent status
- Whether communication or tracking is permitted
- The reason consent was granted or revoked
- Who requested the change, when applicable
Custom consent records can also be created.
2. Import consent
Consent information can be brought into Dynamics using its import functionality, including importing records from Excel.
3. Load existing consent from Outbound Marketing
You can also load consent from existing Dynamics 365 Marketing contact records used by Outbound Marketing. When using this option, only one email address per contact is brought into Real-Time Marketing, and the Allow Bulk Email field is the relevant consent field used during the process.
Understanding consent purposes
A purpose represents the reason consent is collected. Three important purposes in Real-Time Marketing are:
- Commercial communication
- Transactional communication
- Tracking consent
Commercial communication
Commercial emails are used to promote or sell your organization's products, services, or other offerings. Standard marketing messages sent through a customer journey generally fall into this category. New marketing emails are set to commercial by default. Their consent behavior therefore reflects the applicable commercial consent configuration. You can adjust the purpose within the email's settings while working in the email builder.
Transactional communication
Transactional messages are communications associated with a transaction or necessary customer interaction. Examples include:
- Order confirmations
- Receipts
- Billing-related communications
These messages differ from promotional marketing because they can contain information a customer needs as the result of a transaction.
Tracking consent
Tracking consent controls whether you can track certain recipient activities and interactions with your marketing content. Examples include:
Tracking consent is also subject to the enforcement model configured for the applicable purpose.
Using topics for more granular preferences
Within a compliance profile, you can create topics to further categorize the types of communications your organization sends. Topics allow you to provide recipients with more granular choices instead of treating all communications under a purpose as a single preference. The preference center can then be configured to allow recipients to manage these choices, functioning similarly to the subscription-management experience used in Outbound Marketing.
Understanding consent enforcement models
Consent purposes can use different enforcement models to determine whether a communication can be sent.
Restrictive
With the restrictive model, only contact points that have specifically opted in to the applicable purpose can receive the communication.
Nonrestrictive
With the nonrestrictive model, communications can be sent to contact points that are opted in or whose consent has not yet been set.
Disabled
With the disabled model, consent is not checked for that purpose before communicating with the audience. SMS and custom messages are subject to the restrictive model in the version of Dynamics 365 demonstrated in this class, meaning recipients must opt in before receiving those messages.
Managing specific consent records
When establishing email, phone, or custom consent, you'll select the applicable:
- Compliance profile
- Purpose
- Opt-in or opt-out value
- Contact point, such as an email address or phone number
Consent records can also capture additional details about a person's decision. For example, you can indicate whether someone has specifically opted in, opted out, or has not yet selected a consent level. You can also record a reason for the change, such as someone opting in through a landing page or opting out because they no longer want to receive particular content. Maintaining these consent records gives your organization a more detailed picture of each recipient's communication preferences while helping your marketing team apply those preferences consistently.
