Knowing that your contacts have agreed to receive your content, and from which channels, helps protect your sender reputation and keeps you compliant with GDPR. Contacts who knowingly opted in are more likely to engage with your content and less likely to mark it as spam.
You can store consent information for your contacts in a free insight data collection called ConsentInsight.
ConsentInsight doesn't count towards your data storage limit.
Learn more in Using insight data.
Store data types in ConsentInsight
A single ConsentInsight record consists of the following fields:
Consent field | Description |
| What the contact has consented to. Use this field to record information like:
|
| The date and time that your contacts consented to the contents of the |
| The URL that contacts gave you their consent from. For example, the URL of a signup form. |
| The IP address of the device your contacts used when they gave you their consent. |
| The type of web browser that your contacts used when they gave you their consent. |
You can store a contact's marketing preferences alongside ConsentInsight data when collecting it through a page and form, a signup form, or a file upload that includes both consent and preference data.
The preferences recorded reflect what the contact provided at the point of consent.
Subsequent updates to a contact’s marketing preferences do not change the existing ConsentInsight record.
The following fields can be included for each marketing preference:
Marketing preference field | Description |
| The private name of the preference - this doesn't get shown to contacts. |
| The public name of the preference - this gets displayed on preference centres, signup forms, and surveys. |
| The name of the category that the preference belongs to, if it belongs to one. |
| Indicates whether the contact is opted in or or out of the preference. |
A DateTimeCreated field is automatically added to every ConsentInsight record. It captures the date and time the record was created, in UTC+00:00.
You can store multiple ConsentInsight records against a single contact. The Single customer view displays these records with pagination. When you export a contact, all ConsentInsight records are included in the exported JSON file.
Surveys, pages, and forms: Alternatives to the consent checkbox
If you use an alternative method to the Consent checkbox to collect opt-in consent, ConsentInsight doesn't store that consent information. This may affect your ability to meet compliance requirements, such as maintaining records of individual opt-in consent.
The consent checkbox in the Pages, surveys, and forms tool is the recommended method for ensuring compliance and minimising risk.
Upload a ConsentInsight record for a contact
You can upload a ConsentInsight record for a contact at the point of opt-in or at any time afterwards.
You can upload a ConsentInsight record:
When a contact opts in through a signup form or a form that includes the consent element.
By updating existing contacts using an Excel or CSV file, or through the API.
To upload multiple ConsentInsight records for a contact simultaneously, use the API:
Create contact (v3)
To upload a ConsentInsight record by importing an Excel or CSV file, map your column names to the following consent fields:
CONSENTTEXT
CONSENTURL
CONSENTDATETIME
CONSENTIP
CONSENTUSERAGENT
Values for ConsentInsight fields are limited to 1,000 characters.
After uploading a ConsentInsight record, go to the Insight data tab in the Single customer view and select the ConsentInsight collection from the drop-down menu.
Learn more in View a contact’s insight data.
Understand double opt-in and consent
Double opt-in verifies that consent has been given by a contact who genuinely wants to hear from you. Reducing the risk of malicious signups and spam complaints.
After collecting consent through a signup form, send a double opt-in email containing a confirmation link. When your contact follows the link, their record is verified as a double opt-in, confirming the validity of their consent.
Without double opt-in, you can't be sure that a spam bot or malicious actor isn't signing up email addresses and giving consent to data they don't own.
Tips
To remind a contact what they consented to, add the latest Text value from a ConsentInsight record to an email campaign using Liquid:
{{ contact.insight.ConsentInsight[0].Text }}
You can also segment contacts by consent text — for example, using the Contains filter to find contacts who consented to specific channels.