A new guide from marketing insight specialists fast.MAP, published this month, aims to help fundraisers achieve this. Written by fast.MAP’s MD David Cole, the guide emphasises that each charity will probably need its own tailored permission statement: cut and paste from similar organisations’ statements is simply not sufficient.
The guide is not intended as a simple statement of current legislation. Indeed, the author points out that he is not a lawyer. Instead, he explicitly argues that “consent should be seen as a marketing issue, as well as a legal one”.
The guide looks at ways to increase (or decrease) consent to a particular marketing channel, simply by changing the structure and phrasing of the statement.
Often, consent statements acknowledge the negative e.g. “we won’t misuse your data” or “we won’t send you too many messages”. What would a consent statement that is reassuring, relevant and motivating to a donor look like?
Clarity of consent is not always present in some charities’ consent statements. Sometimes supporters will have “legally consented” but will not have intended to consent. Charities will need to pay particular attention to this issue, given the expected trend towards consent which is “freely given, specific and unambiguous”. Many charities use opt-out but opt-in seems to be the direction of travel: how will charities manage the transition and resulting data shrinkage if and when they make that transition?
For the full article please go to the UK Fundraising website
