GDPR Compliance for Optin Cat

You can read an overview and our general approach to GDPR here.

We’ve added a number of features to Optin Cat that will help you be GDPR compliant. Here’s an overview.

Note: None of this is legal advice, so please consult with an attorney in order to achieve GDPR compliance.

Consent Checkbox

Under GDPR, you have to ask for consent, if you use your subscriber’s data for marketing purposes. In practice, this means adding a checkbox to your optin form (alternatively, using double optin in itself may be enough – please consult with an attorney).

Using Optin Cat, you can enable site-wide consent checkboxes for all of your forms. Simply navigate to Settings. Here’s the interface:

Once you’ve turned on the checkbox, your forms will still look exactly like they did before:

Once this form is submitted, your user will see this:

We’ve built this “2-step consent process” because it doesn’t clutter up your forms, and will get you a higher conversion rate.

Here’s how it works. Depending on if your user checks this checkbox, the following will happen.

User doesn’t checkbox, abandons the form:

• Nothing.

User doesn’t checkbox, and hits the call-to-action button again:

• Optin Bait delivery still triggers. (Under GDPR, you can’t prevent your users from receiving an optin bait, even if they don’t want to get email marketing material).
• Consent will be logged as false (see “Consent Tracking” below).
• Email address will not be sent onward to your email provider.

If the user checks the box and hits the “subscribe button” again:

• Optin Bait delivery triggers.
• Consent will be logged as true (see “Consent Tracking” below).
• Email address will be sent onward to your email provider.

Consent Tracking

As of Optin Cat 2.2, we now store a list of all your subscribers that opt-in using Optin Cat, and their consent status. We also store a copy of your consent checkbox’ text at the time of opting in.

To view this table, navigate to Optin Cat -> Subscribers

There are 3 kinds of consent status:

• true (consent given)
• false (consent not given)
• unknown (no consent checkbox was displayed)

Double Optin

Double optin is one way to prove consent. All our email provider integrations support double optin. While double optin may not be required for GDPR compliance (especially if you use a consent checkbox), we’d recommend turning it on.

Data Export & Data Erasure

Under GDPR, you have to erase all user data if requested, and you have to provide all data you have on a user if requested.

Optin Cat integrates with the following WordPress 4.9.6 GDPR features:

• Data export
• Data erasure

This means that if you receive a data erasure or deletion request, you can use WordPress’s default tools. You can learn more here.

If you have any further questions on this please feel free to contact us at here.