Lead consent and privacy

Replying to an enquiry is not the same as marketing

If a person fills your form asking for a quote, calling or emailing them about that quote is what they asked for. Adding them to a monthly offers list is something else. Most privacy and anti-spam laws treat these two differently, and so do customers.

A useful rule of thumb: contact people about what they asked for. For anything beyond that, get a clear yes first.

What good consent looks like

• A separate, unticked checkbox, not hidden inside your terms.
• Plain words that say what you will send and how, for example: Send me offers and updates by email and WhatsApp.
• The enquiry still works if the box is left empty. Consent should not be a condition of getting a reply.
• A record of the exact wording and the time the person agreed.
• An easy way to withdraw, which you act on promptly.

Laws you may need to check

In India, the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 sets out duties for businesses that handle personal data. Customers in the UK and EU are covered by the GDPR and related rules on electronic marketing. Canada has its anti-spam law (CASL), and Australia has its Spam Act and Privacy Act. WhatsApp and other platforms also have their own policies on business messages.

The details, deadlines and exceptions vary. If you market across countries or handle sensitive information, such as health details at a clinic, speak to a qualified adviser.

Consent records in AI Marketing Master

• Each website form source can have its own consent wording. When a visitor ticks your consent box, the lead stores that exact wording and the time.
• When your team adds a lead by hand, they can record that the person agreed, which stores a standard consent wording and the time.
• Meta lead ad leads, Google Ads lead form leads and spreadsheet imports are saved without marketing consent, because the app cannot see what the person agreed to there.
• The Customer 360 view shows the latest consent record for the person, across all their enquiries.

Opt-outs, deletion and exports

• Mark do not contact on a lead when someone asks you to stop. It removes their marketing consent and records the time. One stop request shows on every record of that person.
• Delete a lead for good when someone asks you to remove their details. Deletions are recorded in the audit log.
• Export your leads as a CSV, including consent and opt-out details, to answer a request or move to another system.
• The CRM itself never sends marketing messages to leads, so no automatic message can go to someone who opted out.

How long to keep lead data

Keep enquiry data while it is useful for the purpose it was given, then delete it. An enquiry from three years ago with no further contact is rarely needed. AI Marketing Master supports a lead retention period: when one is set, leads with no activity for that many days are deleted automatically, and each lead shows the date it will be kept until. When no period is set, leads are kept until someone deletes them.

Account-wide, you can export all your data, and deleting an account starts a 30-day grace period before everything is removed.