Latest / Marketing Automation with Fexingo: HubSpot, Marketo, and Automated Customer Journeys / Why Your Marketing Automation Needs a Consent Refresh
Transcript
- Lucas: Let me ask you something, Luna: when was the last time you actually asked your subscribers if they still want to hear from you? Luna: Honestly? I can't remember. And I bet most marketers can't either. We set up the checkbox once and just assume it's good forever. Lucas: Right. And that assumption is getting riskier by the quarter. Data privacy laws are multiplying — GDPR in Europe, CCPA in California, Brazil's LGPD, India's DPDP Act. Every one of them treats consent as something that can expire or degrade. Luna: So 'I agreed in 2019' doesn't cut it anymore. But how many automation flows are running on consent that old? Lucas: Most of them. I saw a case study recently from a mid-sized e-commerce brand that did a consent refresh project in 2024. They had about 400,000 contacts, and they sent a simple re-permission email to everyone who hadn't engaged in over a year. Luna: Oof. That's scary. How many came back? Lucas: Only about 18 percent re-confirmed. But here's the interesting part: their overall email engagement dropped 23 percent immediately after the refresh — because they removed the non-responders from active sends. But within three months, their conversion rate among the remaining list was up 34 percent. Luna: So they took a short-term hit for a much healthier long-term list. That's actually a pretty good trade. Lucas: It is. And it's not just about engagement — it's about deliverability. Internet service providers — Google, Microsoft, Yahoo — they all pay attention to how many people mark your email as spam. If your list is full of people who forgot they subscribed, your spam complaint rate goes up, and your sender reputation takes a hit. Luna: And once your sender reputation drops, even your most loyal subscribers might not get your emails. That's the real cost of stale consent. Lucas: Exactly. So the question is: how do you build consent refresh into your automation model without breaking everything? A lot of marketers treat consent as a binary field — yes or no, checked once. But it's really more like a data freshness metric. Luna: Like a time to live on a database record. You set an expiration, and when it passes, the automation pauses until consent is renewed. Lucas: Right. Some platforms — HubSpot, Marketo — let you create custom consent fields with timestamps. You can set up a trigger that checks if the last consent date is older than, say, 12 months. If it is, the contact gets moved to a re-permission flow instead of your regular nurture sequence. Luna: That makes a lot of sense. But what about contacts that never engage? Do you just keep emailing them until they opt out? Lucas: You shouldn't. A good sunset policy automatically suppresses contacts after a certain period of inactivity — say, six months without opens or clicks — regardless of their consent date. It protects your sender reputation and keeps your list clean. Luna: I actually did a consent audit for a client last year. They had a list that hadn't been cleaned in five years. We sent a re-permission email, and one of the replies was literally 'Who are you and why are you emailing me?' That's not a good look. Lucas: It's also a liability. Under GDPR, if someone complains to the regulator, the burden is on you to prove you had valid consent. If your records show a checkbox from 2018 but no evidence of renewal, you could face a fine. Luna: So consent refresh isn't just best practice — it's compliance. But I imagine a lot of marketers are worried about losing list size. Their bosses look at subscriber count as a metric. Lucas: And they shouldn't. Subscriber count is a vanity metric. Active, engaged, consenting subscribers are what actually drive revenue. The brand I mentioned — they lost 82 percent of their list in the refresh, but their email revenue per subscriber went up by over 40 percent. Luna: That's the kind of number that gets a CFO's attention. So how do you actually implement a consent refresh flow? Walk me through it. Lucas: Sure. First, you need a clear definition of what counts as consent in your system. Is it a checkbox on a form? An implicit consent from a purchase? Different automations may need different rules. Then you set a timestamp field that records when consent was last given or refreshed. Luna: And then a scheduled trigger that checks that timestamp regularly. Lucas: Exactly. For example, once a month, your automation runs through all active contacts and checks if their consent timestamp is older than 12 months. If it is, the contact is tagged for re-permission and removed from all other automated flows until they re-confirm. Luna: What does the re-permission email say? I've seen some that are basically 'click here or we'll stop emailing you.' That feels a bit cold. Lucas: It can be warmer. Something like 'We want to make sure you're still interested in hearing from us. Click here to confirm your subscription and continue receiving updates.' And if they don't click within 30 days, you suppress them automatically. Luna: And what about consent collected through third-party sources? Like if you bought a list or got data from a partner? That's almost never valid under current privacy laws. Lucas: Right. Purchased lists are almost always a violation of both the law and platform terms of service. If you have any third-party data in your automation, you should either get explicit consent from those contacts or remove them entirely. It's not worth the risk. Luna: So the bottom line is: consent isn't a one-time event. It's a recurring data point that needs to be part of your automation logic. Treat it like a lead score that can decay. Lucas: Exactly. And honestly, if today's episode helped you think differently about your consent data, that's great. If you found it useful enough to buy us a coffee, that link is buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. No pressure — just know that listener support keeps these conversations ad-free. Luna: Yeah, it really does. And we appreciate every single person who's chipped in. It means we can keep digging into the real stuff without worrying about sponsors. Lucas: So back to consent: one thing I'd recommend is auditing your automation triggers this month. Look for any flow that sends email without checking the freshness of consent. You might be surprised how many there are. Luna: And if you find one, don't panic. Just build a re-permission flow, set a sunset policy, and start the cleanup. Your future self — and your subscribers — will thank you. Lucas: Exactly. Clean consent is the foundation of every automated relationship. Ignore it, and you're building on sand.