Managing the Tracking Consent
Privacy protection laws are interpreted more and more strictly, and some web players even take their own initiatives to go further (for example, Apple's "Mail Privacy Protection").
In the United Kingdom for instance, the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulation (PECR) states that consent is required to place or read information on the device of a profile.
Actito therefore offers its users to give the possibility to the profiles from their database to choose if they consent that their behaviour be tracked for marketing purposes.
To do so, Actito allows to manage the tracking consent, which defines whether the behaviour of a profile following a campaign can be tracked (for example: recording the opening or a click in a campaign).
Understanding the tracking consent
The tracking consent is broadly defined as the consent to track the behaviour of a profile for marketing purposes.
Practically, the tracking consent regulates the following actions:
recording the opening of an e-mail
recording a click in an e-mail
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recording the device and the user-agent used by the profile
recording a click in an SMS message
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recording a website visit or transaction goal
For a profile who refused to give their tracking consent, none of the above actions will be stored in their interactions.
Good to know
Through its mechanics, the tracking consent resembles the marketing consent (marketingConsent attribute), which regulates the consent given by a profile to be contacted by marketing communications.
However, a profile could very well accept to receive communications, but not that their behaviour following these communications be stored and used to influence the future messages they will receive.
These 2 concepts are in fact complementary.
Applying the consent
In practice, applying a negative tracking consent will have an impact on reporting and profile interactions.
Reporting
If a profile does not consent to tracking their behaviour, the opening of an e-mail and a click in an e-mail or an SMS will not be counted in the campaign report.
No trace at all of this action will be stored, even not anonymously, and therefore the stats of the campaign will appear as if the action from the profile did not occur at all.
Similarly, no goal transaction will be attached to the campaign, nor will it appear in the Revenue application.
Profile interactions
If a profile does not consent to tracking their behaviour, none of the previous interactions will appear in their profile interactions.
This means that:
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this interaction will not be included in the exports of the events of a campaign
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this profile cannot be targeted for this interaction (indeed, a profile with negative consent will always be considered as "non-opener" of a campaign in a targeting)
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no scenario can be triggered by this interaction. Similarly, a wait block "opening" or "click in an e-mail" will always put a profile with negative consent in the exit branch, because the action will not be recorded.
Moreover, at the level of profile attributes, the technical attributes "Latest e-mail device" and "Latest e-mail user agent" will no longer be updated.
The effect of a negative tracking consent is to not store the interaction. From a practical point of view, the technical means set-up by Actito to collect the information (such as the tracking pixel or the links redirection) remain in the e-mail campaigns. But any ensuing interaction will not be recorded nor stored in the licence.
Viewing the tracking consent
The collected consent is stored in the profile, under the ‘interactions’ tab.
Besides the status information (‘yes/no’), Actito also stores 3 types of information, which can be viewed if you click on the details:
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The data collection source: the means by which Actito collected the information
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The data collection way: this data will display technical information related to the device used by the profile to give its consent
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The data collection moment: it is the date and hour at which Actito collected the information
Good to know
The action of removing one's consent will impact future interactions, which will not be recorded, but does not delete the opening, clicks, etc information collected previously, when the consent was positive. Historical data therefore remain available.
The update of the tracking consent of a profile can exported through the app "Manage exports", thanks to the incremental export on "Profile changes" with the type "Consent changes" (which contains both the acceptation and refusal of marketing consent and tracking consent).
Tracking consent changes are also recorded in the audit trail of a profile.
Obtaining the consent of a profile
The consent (or non-consent) of a profile can be gathered upstream in your system and fed into Actito via import, synchronization or API call.
It can also be collected directly via Actito forms:
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By creating a collection form, and link it to an (e-mail or SMS) campaign.
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By create a preference center, to be used as scenario to unsubscribe an e-mail campaign.
For more information about the creation of those forms, we invite you to read the ‘subscriptions’ chapter.