Ways B2B Marketers can Obtain Consent to Adhere to New EU Privacy Laws

On December 20th one of our customers posted a question in the Marketo online community about the EU privacy directive.  I watched our customers and partners share their answers, but personally I was left with even more questions.  What was it?  Did it affect me? What needed to change? I spent hours trying to understand everything that was happening, and piece together how these changes would impact my marketing, the marketing of our customers, and even how it would change how companies like Google and Omniture did business abroad.  I gave up on searching for answers and instead put together a big list of questions for Marketo’s deliverability and privacy director.  His answers were awesome, helping me understand what was going on and what changes I needed to make.

The Basics

I learned from him that new legislation called the European e-Privacy directive legally mandates that EU countries must make decisions about privacy in their countries which may include laws that require websites tracking users with cookies to collect explicit consent from the person being tracked before they are tracked.

Obtaining Consent

The key to compliance is obtaining explicit consent. This means choosing specific language on how you are marketing and tracking. Explicit consent also means that there must also be some kind of affirmative action (e.g. clicking) where the subscribers acknowledges their consent to marketing and tracking. A good example of this is where a subscriber provides consent by clicking which causes a pop-up box specifying what you will do with the subscriber’s personal data.

Options for Obtaining Consent

There will be many ways for organizations to comply. These may include: