Using SmartSurvey to Collect GDPR Consent

Important- this article does not constitute legal advice. You should ensure that you are aware of your responsibilities regarding personal data at all times while using SmartSurvey  About GDPR compliance

SmartSurvey, when used with piping and the email tool, can be used to quickly and simply collect improved marketing consent from your respondents.

Below is a step-by-step process of how to allow your respondents to consent to further communications from you. To start with, you’ll need to create a survey as this is what will be used to collect their consent.

1. In your survey, you'll need to create a Descriptive Text question (under Page Elements), with the text:
   Subscribe to Our Updates
   To continue receiving emails from us, we need your consent.
   If you do not wish to consent to emails, simply close this form without clicking confirm.
2. Click the green + Add Question button below your new Descriptive Text question
3. For the next question, select Single Textbox (under Text) and enter the following text:
   This is the Email Address we have stored for you. If you wish to amend it, edit this box.
4. Click the Options tab at the top of the question popup dialoge box and toggle the Default Answer box
5. Click in the text field that appears, and then the Insert Piping
6. Hover over Email Invite Contact and choose Email Address from the drop-down menu. You should see the text: [contact(email)] present in that text field now. Finally, click Save Question
7. Next, create another question selecting Multiple Choice (Multiple Answers), this is under Choice.
   Question Text:
   Check the box below to consent to continuing to receive emails
   Answer Choices:
   I agree to receive news, tips and promotional material from ***Name of Your Organisation*** by email.
8. Scroll down and toggle Require an answer to this question at the bottom of the popup box. Edit the error message to say:
   This question requires an answer. If you do not wish to consent, simply close this form without clicking confirm
9. Click the green Save Question button
10. Add a final Descriptive text question, with the text: By clicking 'Confirm', you confirm that you have read our Privacy Policy
11. Highlight the words Privacy Policy and click on the "Chain icon" in the text editor menu above labeled Insert/edit link. In the URL box within the popup box, paste the link to your privacy policy. The Text to display box should be pre-populated with the text you've highlighted, if not enter it. You can change how the link will open in the Open link in... box. Finally, click the blue Save button
12. Click the green Save Question button
13. Click Settings from the white navigation bar on the left of the page. Under General, you can rename the title of your survey to something appropriate
14. In the Appearance tab, untick Show Page Numbers and Show Question Numbers. Change the Finish Button text to 'Confirm'
15. In the Finish tab, change the Heading Text to 'Thank you for subscribing'
16. Change the Thank you text to 'Thanks for subscribing, we’ll be in touch soon. Don’t forget you can unsubscribe at any time' Scroll down and ensure Enable Redirect under Auto Redirect is Toggled to No
17. Click the green Save Changes button 
18. The survey is now set up! Go to Collect at the top of the page and click Open to open your survey

Setting up an email invitation

You will need to go to our Creating and Using Contact Lists help guide.

When uploading your contact list, it should only include people who have previously given their consent. Sending a message like this to opted-out users could be a violation of the rules

Create the email as described in the "using contact lists" guide, by choosing a contact list to use and creating a message.

For the Subject Line, you can put anything you like that you think your users will engage with.

For the message, use this text as a base. Do not alter the [SURVEYLINK] or [OPTOUT] tags:

Once the survey has been sent out, you can export all responses to get a list of email addresses with consent, along with the time and date that the survey was completed. This would be good evidence of consent under GDPR.

With minor changes, the survey can be used as a general signup form, by rewording the email address question to remove the references to changing it. 

The example given relates to email marketing, but if you have multiple communications channels such as SMS, or push notifications, (or multiple email streams for different products, for instance) you can add extra tickboxes to the “check the box” question to cover those channels. If there are other forms of processing you intend to do, You can also add extra fields at step 4 for phone numbers, or street address information, and use piping to insert that information as default answers (see Piping Custom Contact List Fields).

To use the Default Answer Feature, You’ll need a Business-Level Account