opt-in to receive updates

Question

We all know GDPR is coming. I currently use drupal webforms with civicrm processing enabled. I use the privacy option to allow people to tick a box to opt out of receiving email update eg the person fills out a survey but doesn't want to be contacted, they can tick the box and it fills out the user opted out box on their record.

With GDPR this will be the wrong way round. I have to ask the user to tick a box to stay in. Obviously I can do this by creating a custom field and then unsubscibing those that don't, however I'm keen to do this automatically. I am aware there is a new extension being developed by Veda Consulting ( :) ) however it doesn't look like this deals with this? For clarity I am looking for general opt in rather than group opt in.

How are other people planning to deal with this? Am I missing something obvious in drupal webform?

Thank you!

Caroline

Answer 1

Sounds like you have an unusual use-case where you are in the habit of sending emails to every contact in your database. More typical uses of CiviCRM involve sending mailings to one or more groups of contacts. The Webform-CiviCRM module accommodates this nicely - add the Groups field to your webform (e.g. user-select) and then edit that webform field to only show the group(s) that are relevant to receiving mailings. Each group will appear as a checkbox on the form. After submitting the form, if the user selects a mailing group they will receive an email confirmation; they will not be considered as part of the group until they confirm by email. This is called "double opt-in" and is consistent with most anti-spam laws.

There is no setting in Webforms to control this behavior, the settings are in CiviCRM. To ensure your group subscriptions get double-opt-in, do the following:

1. Make sure it is considered a mailing group by CiviCRM (go to Manage Groups screen to confirm this).
2. Go to Administer -> CiviMail -> CiviMail Component Settings and make sure the first option on that screen "Enable Double Opt-in for Profile Group(s) field" is enabled.

Answer 2

The latest version of the GDPR extension takes care of this. It has its own communication preferences page which presents the options the right way around whilst updating the existing CiviCRM fields. You could probably use that to better effect as it also includes group subscriptions, data policy and possible profile updates on the same page.