Disclaimer: This material is provided for your general information and is not intended to provide legal advice. To understand the full impact of the GDPR on your data processing activities, please consult an independent legal and/or privacy professional.
Our new GDPR-ready features are live. They are designed to support your privacy efforts and make the move to GDPR compliance more straightforward.
Who needs to be GDPR compliant?
If you send emails to EU residents, the GDPR applies to you, even if your business is not based in the EU. It covers any organisation that processes the personal data of EU citizens or residents, including customers, prospects, employees, and visitors to your website.
If you are an email marketer, the GDPR almost certainly applies to you.
Subscriber Consent
The GDPR requires that data processing has a lawful basis. For marketers, consent is the most practical option. We have updated our subscriber-related features accordingly.
Subscribe pages and preference centres
You will soon be able to request consent directly on your subscribe page, with the option to link to your privacy and cookie policies from the form itself. Existing subscribers can update their own consent settings in their preference centre, provided you have enabled that option.
File imports and adding subscribers manually
Before importing subscribers from a file or adding them manually, you can include a "consent to track" column and set each subscriber's value to yes or no. After upload, you match this data to the "consent to track" field. If no value is provided, the field stays unchanged. Where no existing value is present, the subscriber is assumed to have given consent to be tracked.
Subscribers added via API
Several API endpoints will soon be updated to version 3.2. When working with email subscribers or transactional email recipients on 3.2, a mandatory consent-to-track parameter is required. Accepted values are yes, no, or unchanged. If you are already on an older version of the API, nothing changes for you. Contact our Support team if you need help with the API endpoints.
These features make it easier to gather subscriber consent, strengthen data security, and build more trust with your audience. They will be available to all TouchBasePro users.
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Frequently asked questions
- Does GDPR apply to South African businesses that email EU customers?
- Yes. GDPR applies to any organisation that processes the personal data of EU citizens or residents, regardless of where that organisation is based. If you have EU subscribers on your list, GDPR is relevant to you.
- What happens if I import subscribers without a consent-to-track value?
- If no consent-to-track value is provided during a file import, the field stays unchanged. Where no existing value is on record for that subscriber, they are assumed to have given consent to be tracked.
- Will upgrading to API version 3.2 break my existing integration?
- No. If you are already using an older version of the TouchBasePro API, nothing changes. Version 3.2 introduces a mandatory consent-to-track parameter, but only for integrations that move to that version.