Practical Usage of Privacy Element on Forms

[ACutting]

New Hubspot user working on implementation at a B2B company that sells globally. I'd like to add the privacy element to our forms, but only deisplay opt-in checkboxes in certain regions where it is required. This is a common feature I'm used to in other tools.

As I've dug in, the Privacy element cannot be set to display dynamically by inferred region, or even as a dependent field of a dropdown field (country). The workarounds I've been presented with by support and our implementation partners is to create multiple versions of each and every form with and without opt-in checkboxes and build a custom script on our marketing site to swap out the form ID based on the region. That seems insane and unscalable.

How are other businesses handling this? Particuarly B2B companies that operate globally? Are we just not using the GDPR feature and doing it all through custom properties? Any tips for how to implement in a scalable, best-practice way?

Thanks!

[karstenkoehler]

Hi @ACutting,

Out of interest, which major regions are you marketing and selling to where you can send marketing emails without prior consent?

What I'm typically seeing (and configuring) is that either different forms are used for language versions of a website (e.g. German page has German form with different consent notice than US form on US page) – or that simply the strictest standard is applied for everyone, in that case an optional marketing consent checkbox and an additional line of text that explains how data are being processed and which links to the privacy policy.

Even if that is not required, I would consider it best practice and an added element of trust.

Best regards!

PS. My reply does not constitute legal advice.

[ACutting]

Hi Karsten. We operate globally. The core of our business is in the US, but we have a significant footprint in Europe, MEA, and APAC. We dont currently have different versions of the website for different regions. Not in our immediate plans, but still my expectation would be that regardless of which regional version of the website a visitor is on, they should still be served the appropriate level of privacy/consent based on their location.

The way we're currently doing this in our legacy automation tool is by requiring country as an input on all forms, and based on what is selected, we either display/don't display opt-in checkboxes. It's not ideal for us to collect country as a required field, however it has the benefit of ensuring anyone processed through forms to our CRM has a self-selected country value as opposed to relying on inferred/enriched data, or worse, system defaults.

Displaying the checkbox in the US, since that's still the core of our business, is not a viable solution.

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

@ACutting in that case, I see two options:

• Smart content based on the country: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/website-and-landing-pages/create-and-manage-smart-content-rules (not very reliable if employees of prospects and customers use VPNs, for example)
• Combination of dependent form fields and workflows: You would set up dependent fields to only show consent checkboxes (one required for data processing, one optional for marketing) if contacts are not from the US, then use workflows to update the correct "Legal basis for data processing field" accordingly + update the subscription type opt-in accordingly.
  • https://knowledge.hubspot.com/forms/use-dependent-form-fields
  • https://knowledge.hubspot.com/workflows/create-workflows

[ACutting]

Thanks, and yeah another limitation of that first option is that it would only apply to Hubspot pages--wouldn't apply to marketing site pages not built in hubspot.

Sounds like dependent fields and workflows is the way forward.