From a HubSpot usage and GDPR compliance perspective, I’m curious to know how others are making this scenario work:
At the software company I work for, we have landing pages that offer free 30-day trials of our products. I’ve turned on HubSpot’s “Notice and Consent/Legitimate Interest” text on the forms, specifically ‘consent checkboxes for communications and processing’.
Additionally, for quite some time we've had workflows set up for these trials to welcome the users, help keep them engaged, offer tips on the product, and remind them that their trial is coming to an end. The workflows are set under a “subscription type” as required by HubSpot - however, with the new GDPR feature enabled and the consent option turned on for the forms, I only see an option to make the “consent to process” a required field, and there seems to be no way to make a subscription type a requirement to complete the form… which means that none of my workflow emails can be sent if someone doesn’t check the box. On one hand, I can understand the GDPR spirit of giving people the option to choose or not choose to hear from us… but then again they’re interested enough to want a product trial, and we need to give them some info about using the product. So, what gives?
I’m curious how others are using workflows while also being compliant (without having to manually opt in each contact and complete the ‘consent - legitimate interest’ record)? Am I missing something?
@AmandaFL I completely understand your specific needs here. However, from a technical and automatic perspective it would be hard to attribute a proper consent on an email by email basis.
Realistically if we can something along the lines of "allow workflow emails" or anything along those lines, we couldn't accurately attribute consent to this, especially if someone had opted out.
I don't want to speak to any of the legaility or compliance of all of this, this would really be up to your legal council. However, if you feel you want to email some people without subscription types in HubSpot you can enable GDPR settings and un-check the "only allow marketing emails to be sent....." checkbox. This will enable all GDPR settings, however it will allow you to email anyone in your portal still, even if they do not have a subscription type.
This would make so much more sense. Implicit opt-in is still a thing and HubSpot functionality seemingly straight away ignores it.
Someone who subscribes on a webinar pages implicitly acknowledges to receive communications about said webinar - this falls well within the legal concept of reasonability.
Would be great if there were a better answer then the one currently listed as top answer.
This way the registrant receives the first email with the material they requested (of course) and no further automated comms if the consent to communicate has been withheld. Second, third touch emails proceed if consent has been granted.
@AmandaFL I completely understand your specific needs here. However, from a technical and automatic perspective it would be hard to attribute a proper consent on an email by email basis.
Realistically if we can something along the lines of "allow workflow emails" or anything along those lines, we couldn't accurately attribute consent to this, especially if someone had opted out.
I don't want to speak to any of the legaility or compliance of all of this, this would really be up to your legal council. However, if you feel you want to email some people without subscription types in HubSpot you can enable GDPR settings and un-check the "only allow marketing emails to be sent....." checkbox. This will enable all GDPR settings, however it will allow you to email anyone in your portal still, even if they do not have a subscription type.
We have tried this option, this does allow workflow emails to be sent through, but the issue is that with "only allow marketing emails to be sent....." un-checked, we can't pull out/create a list of contacts which have opted-into a certain subscription type, we can only pull out/create a list of contacts which have opted-out of a certain subscription type.
As per GDPR, I believe that non-workflow marketing emails of a certain subscription type should only be sent to those contacts who have explicitly opted-into that subscription type, but we can't do that with "only allow marketing emails to be sent....." un-checked as I explained above.
This is an issue because a contact might not have necessarily opted-out of a certain subscription type but he/she might also not have opted-into that subscription type, and in that case, this contact shouldn't be receiving the email of that subscription type.
When you have 'only send to contacts with an updated basis to communicate' box unchecked, then you can only create a list of contacts who have opted out, but when you have it checked then you can create list of contacts who have opted-out, or who have opted-in or who have not opted-into a certain subscription type. I believe, in the GDPR world, this is a very important feature to have.
For example, we have a subscription type called "ABC", and when we are sending an "ABC" type email to our database, then only the contacts who have explicitly opted-into "ABC" should get the email, people who have opted-out won't get it obviously, but contacts who have not opted-into (they haven't responded or updated their email preferences) should also not get the email and I think the large majority will be sitting in this bucket, which makes it even more critical.
So, this partially resolves the issue but not completely.
@kazimz As far as I'm away the "only allow marketing emails..." option should have no affect on the list segmentation for subscription types.
Are you sure you're just simply unchecking the checkbox for this and you're still enabling the global GDPR options through the toggle switch on the right?
Your options should look like this:
If the toggle on the right is disabled, then GDPR options have been disabled so this would disabled the option to use subscription types to segment lists.
With the checkbox on the left disabled and the toggle on the right enabled then you should have all GDPR settings, but HubSpot will not block emails going out to people without subscription types. It would be on you to ensure emails are only sent to the correct people.
I have similar issue because of a different reason.
Our global company has 1 Hubspot account that should support all regional marketing teams. For example, we have a marketing team in Europe and another team in USA.
The GDPR toggle is on, as we want to complly with the GDPR rules for the Europe region but the american marketing team don't need to complly with that, and the box is unchecked.
Every time that anyone (including the US team) sends out a direct email from Hubspot, the user needs to set the consent type. I didn't check how is it with automated emails. will the email go out?
Is there a solution for setting up different restriction rules for different users? Maybe different teams?
Thanks @MFrankJohnson for sharing the links and calling in other resources!
@Tom thank you for pointing out the email checkbox. I'll take a closer look at this option and see if I can make this solution work, assuming I cover all the other compliance steps.
Thought I remember reading something Phil Vallender (from the UK) or Tom wrote on this very subject, but can't see to find it for the life of me. Guess I'm more confused today than usual. haha