Soft Opt-in / Legitimate Interest ?

[TonyAshley]

Hi All,

I wonder if anyone can advise me. I run a busy car classifieds web site and have built up a considerable emailing list, however, this was obtained using a non-GDPR compliant opt-in (pre-ticked consent box). I am concerned about this list becoming as useful as a chocolate tea pot on the 25 May 2018.

I’ve been hearing about the soft opt-in route re repermissioning. Could somebody please clarify what is meant by "soft opt-in" because I’m having difficulty finding a clear and unambiguous definition of this. From my web browsing am I correct in saying it can also be referred to as “legitimate interest” or are they different things ? Essentially are "soft opt-in" and "legitimate interest" one and the same thing ?

Is it also not the case that if one can use "legitimate interest" then sending repermissioning emails is not required ?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank You.

 

[Keith Budden]

I think you could use "legitimate interest" but my professional advice would be don't rely on legitimate interest, especially in your case where for many users you are providing essentially a 'one-off' service, i.e. they come to your site to sell or buy a vehicle, and once the transaction is completed, they don't come back again.

I would say you would be much safer sending an email to each user, asking them to confirm they wished to keep hearing from you (give them a subtle sweetener, i.e. "we have some great new features launching in the next few months, and we'd love to be able to tell you about them but if you don't confirm your subscription to our newsletter by ticking the box below and clicking the 'Keep Me In' button, we won't be able to keep in contact with you any more, and we would hate you to miss out")

Think of it as an opportunity, it may trim your list down a bit, but the ones that are left positively want to hear from you and so are likely to be much more receptive to what you have to say.

 

[TonyAshley]

Thank you very much Keith, that was most helpful. I appreciate you taking the time to help.

 

[twaen]

You need to re-subscribe your list and delete the ones who do not re-subscribe. You cannot hold data obtained with pre-ticked consent box.

Re-subscribe generally worked well, according with feedback from those who did it. You end up with a fresh list with good engagement, unless your list was already stale. I've seen 25% - 30% re-subscribe ratios, but of course it differs from case to case. If your members value your list, they will re-subscribe. Make clear to them that if they do not, they will be removed from list and not receiving emails anymore.

 

[Mike Etherington]

My understanding is the same as twaen - you cannot really get away with the previous opt ins as they are not compliant. Sounds like you could easily email those you have and ask them to opt in using a compliant message. you'll lose a bunch but they don't want to hear any more anyway so a smaller, more engaged and compliant list is what you will end up with.