TOPIC:

This is one of the GDPR / privacy updates.

This is one of the most significant changes implemented to FreeToastHost to bring it in line with new GDPR / privacy regulations and "best practices". With that said, we know this change is likely going to cause many of you some consternation and upset. (We get that.) Sorry, but we have to do this in one fashion or another.

We now must require all additions of people's contact information to Membership Management to be done via an explicit Opt-In. We had already been discussing this before all this discussion about the GDPR regulations came about as a "best practice".

Given that most clubs add new members, prospects, guests, former members, and friend contact information to Membership Management without any intervention by the new person added, I considered how to best do this without messing up that existing "work flow". What I came up with is a sort of "inactivated status" that new people are tagged with until they click the opt-in link in an opt-in email that is automatically generated by the system and sent to them. People who have not yet clicked the opt-in link are treated like "zombies" in the system... they exist in Membership Management but you cannot do anything useful with them and they are filtered out of list emails.

There is a *lot* that I have had to consider with implementing this, so I am going to break this up into several posts in this topic thread.

To illustrate how this works, lets add a hypothetical new Prospect to Membership Management.


When I click Save, I will now receive a new notification pop-up:


The save completes while I read the new pop-up, and then I see the following:


Notice what is different here. Note that this person's information has been saved, but it is shown with a strike through to indicate that the person has not yet opted in. (They have up to 30 days to click the link or their info gets deleted by the system.) Additionally, many of the buttons are disabled for this person and you will find that you cannot do anything other than delete them with the Membership Tools menu. Once the person clicks the Opt-in link in the email, they are "activated" and no more strike-through and you can freely work with their information.

BTW, if you are working in Membership Management when someone clicks the Opt-in link (and they tell you), just click the Save button to refresh the table and see the update without the strikeout. The Save doubles as a "refresh" for this situation.

Now lets look at the email side of this...

Here is the automatically generated email that the new person receives when they are added:


If they click the link to approve (opt-in) their addition to the website, then they see a landing page and the website administrator gets a notification email like the following:
(the new person's contact info can be readily used without any system imposed restrictions)


If they click the link to decline their addition to the website, then they see a landing page and the website administrator gets a notification email like the following:


BTW, the landing page looks similar to the following:

Ok, let's consider something typical... the new person loses the opt-in email or it gets stuck it their spam folder. I have also added a new "tool" on the Membership Tools drop-down...


Generally speaking, this function and the delete function are about the only things that will work for new members added that have not opted-in yet.

When I click the above menu selection, I see the following:


This lets me re-send the opt-in email to the new member/prospect/guest...etc.

So yes, this is big, messy, cumbersome... and we had to do it. People must be given the explicit choice to have their contact information added to a website even when that choice seems obvious and even when they have verbally approved it.

Moving forward, I may change the styling of the people not yet activated to something different than strikeout. Another possibility would be to put them on their own tab in Membership Management, but that would be more work than I wanted to do right now until I give you all a chance to "beat this up".

I may revise the wording of the emails if that makes sense.

Additionally, currently all the approved / declined notifications just go to the website admin. I will probably need to set up a new pop-up checklist to let clubs and districts specify where to send those. (patience please...)

Other than a suggestion to totally get rid of this, if anyone has any suggestions on how to make this easier / more user friendly I am all ears. Brian and I have been beating this concept around quite a bit trying to figure out the best way to do this.

Hi Steve

Appreciate all you are doing to keep FTH up to date and compliant with the myriad rules and regulations.

One thing that occurs to me is that if a Prospect doesn't have an email address there is little point in generating an email that won't go anywhere .

Cheers
Kingsley

KingsleyMoody wrote:

Hi Steve

Appreciate all you are doing to keep FTH up to date and compliant with the myriad rules and regulations.

One thing that occurs to me is that if a Prospect doesn't have an email address there is little point in generating an email that won't go anywhere

.

Cheers
Kingsley

Hmmm... Good point. Any ideas on how to deal with this? Perhaps I could route the opt-in email to the admin email address for those special cases?

Sounds like a plan, so long as the admin is not getting a copy all opt-in emails sent out.

Does this change mean that the WELCOME email function is no longer needed / available?

KingsleyMoody wrote:

Sounds like a plan, so long as the admin is not getting a copy all opt-in emails sent out.

Does this change mean that the WELCOME email function is no longer needed / available?

Currently, the admin would get the response back from the person added, but I plan to enable that to be changed... I just have not figured out where in the Admin Console to locate the setting for setting the recipent(s) of the notifications back from the person who opted in.

You still have the Welcome email available. However, I had been thinking of phasing it out in favor of everyone just using an email template w/ Send Basic Email. You would still have variables, but it could look nicer since it would not need to be just a plain text email.

Another possibility is somehow combining the Welcome Email w/ the Opt-in email.

There is certainly room for discussion on this.

SteveTheTechie wrote:

Perhaps I could route the opt-in email to the admin email address for those special cases?

I implemented this tweak.

I appreciate your efforts, however I don't fully agree with your approach.

The current method before the opt in method was added, is compatible with the Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation with Implicit consent.
i.e. emails are added to the Friends, prospect, past member and members list only after they have been given to us by the visitor. The FTH system already has an unsubscribe feature which has already been used successfully by some of our visitors.

At the very least, if the changes are inevitable, I think that the following cmodifications should be implemented:
1) The opt in message should de-techied a bit. >> There is a segment of the population who may not respond positively
2) The 30 day time limit on opting in should have a reminder step added in. Perhaps the two weeks time point might be a good interval. >> Some of need a reminder . . .they just do.

We have to serve the world and the new requirements of the GDPR has a much higher level of requirements. You will seeing all multi-national companies adopting these requirements. We are doing what is required for the May 25 deadline and will add additional functionality as time permits.

rckhllwy wrote:

I appreciate your efforts, however I don't fully agree with your approach.

The current method before the opt in method was added, is compatible with the Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation with Implicit consent.
i.e. emails are added to the Friends, prospect, past member and members list only after they have been given to us by the visitor. The FTH system already has an unsubscribe feature which has already been used successfully by some of our visitors.

At the very least, if the changes are inevitable, I think that the following cmodifications should be implemented:
1) The opt in message should de-techied a bit. >> There is a segment of the population who may not respond positively
2) The 30 day time limit on opting in should have a reminder step added in. Perhaps the two weeks time point might be a good interval. >> Some of need a reminder . . .they just do.

Double opt-in is what I understand to be current best practice... and is what is needed for GDPR. If you consider the implicit initial consent or supply of information via contact form to be a single opt in, then we are requiring 2nd one... we are closer to double opt in. However, if you read the available references, we really are not truly double opt in, since we allow you to add someone to the list before we ask them for permission to do that via the opt-in email. My workaround is just to add them in a deactivated, unusable state. However, even with my approach, it really does not exactly meet the high standard of double opt-in... but we are much closer.

Read the following, for example, which gives specifics about "double opt in": www.mailjet.com/gdpr/consent/

1. If you have *specific* suggestions on the email, please provide those... I am all ears. Just providing a generalized negative comment on the email does not help us improve it. Specifics please?

2. Yeah, some sort of reminder may be needed. I will need to sort through the technical issues of triggering reminders.

3. If there are any suggestion on making this more usable (other than killing it), please let us know.

BTW, keep in mind that we are not exactly thrilled to add this... I think we are basically backed into a corner though, and have to do it to be able to provide FreeToastHost to an international user base and say we are compliant with prevailing privacy laws / regulations with a straight face.

Club: Mutual Voices - #3852
Club website: 3852.toastmastersclubs.org

I'm posting this here because I'm pretty sure our issue is related to this new functionality. Let me know if I should post this elsewhere.

We tried to add two new people to our club website with their email addresses and phone numbers. As is shown in this thread, they show up as "NOT ACTIVATED YET" in the Membership Management with the strikethrough text. However, the opt-in emails are not getting sent to the two new members. As the site admin, I received the emails that were sent. The subject of the emails is "Added to Mutual Voices Toastmasters Website With NO EMAIL ADDRESS" and the emails don't include their names, just an empty string where the names should be.

Are we missing something here? Let me know if you need any other information to help get this resolved.

Do they have to opt in using the email -- or would simply setting up their log in to the website using their email address activate them? Or does the opt in process include setting up their password, so that it is a one step operation?

How is TI going to notify new members about the Pathways program without an opt in process?

paul.jungels@securian.com wrote:

Club: Mutual Voices - #3852
Club website: 3852.toastmastersclubs.org

I'm posting this here because I'm pretty sure our issue is related to this new functionality. Let me know if I should post this elsewhere.

We tried to add two new people to our club website with their email addresses and phone numbers. As is shown in this thread, they show up as "NOT ACTIVATED YET" in the Membership Management with the strikethrough text. However, the opt-in emails are not getting sent to the two new members. As the site admin, I received the emails that were sent. The subject of the emails is "Added to Mutual Voices Toastmasters Website With NO EMAIL ADDRESS" and the emails don't include their names, just an empty string where the names should be.

Are we missing something here? Let me know if you need any other information to help get this resolved.

Ok if it says w/ NO EMAIL ADDRESS that is because people were added without an email address so you as the admin get the opt-in email instead so that they can still be added. It is a workaround for the moment... I had to indicate to the admin why they are getting the opt-in email.

The members's name should be at the top of the email ... the greeting.

If you can look at the links in the email and give me the mid=###### part, I will be able to figure out what happened.
(that tells me who it is for)

AnnetteRude wrote:

Do they have to opt in using the email -- or would simply setting up their log in to the website using their email address activate them? Or does the opt in process include setting up their password, so that it is a one step operation?

How is TI going to notify new members about the Pathways program without an opt in process?

The answer to your first 2 questions is no... not currently. However, I am open to discussing improvements, so long as everyone understands we must have a specific date recorded in our db (their "activation date") when people gave explicit permission to have their information added. *Inferring permission* will not work anymore.

I have updated this functionality to add a Settings tab in Membership Management to allow you to set which club officers (or the Website Administrator) should receive the relevant notification emails for this new Opt-in functionality. Thus, clubs will not need to rely solely on their website admins for monitoring website opt-ins. However, if a new member does not have an email address, then the opt-in email is still only routed to the website admin as their alternate--we have to limit that usage.

Additionally, I have added the relevant distribution list at the bottom of each email so you can see who else is receiving them. Right now, it is just short hand names for officer roles, but I am kind of liking the thought of providing something like this so I may improve on it and add it to other notification emails in the system.

Here are the relevant screen shots for these new settings:

BTW, I will give everyone an option to kill the notification pop-up when you save a new person... in about a week or so.

I just am trying to force some awareness with a purposely annoying pop-up. I just need a bit of time to make sure people read it.

I have added the date after which people who never opted in will be deleted to the tooltip that shows when you hover over a person's information that has not yet opted in (the ones with the strikeout through their info).

It looks like the following:

There is now a notification pop-up that displays when you start Membership Management.

This pop-up will notify you of any people that have been deleted because they never opted in or those that will "soon" be deleted. ("Soon" means within 15 days or sooner.)