Marketing consent

Only customers who have said yes can receive marketing emails. Nobody is opted in by default, including every customer you had before this existed. That’s the safe reading of UK rules on marketing email (PECR and GDPR): it’s permission somebody gave, not permission you assumed. None of this affects emails about a booking — confirmations, invoices, reminders — which go to everybody as before.

The ways somebody says yes.

• Your enquiry form and your courses page both have an unticked box: “Send me news and offers from … by email. They can see whether I open them and which links I click, and I can unsubscribe at any time.” If they tick it, the enquiry shows it, and accepting the enquiry records their consent on the customer with the exact words they agreed to. Declining it records nothing.
• Your sign-up form, if you turn it on under Sign-up form on the Marketing page: a web page of its own (which you can also link to from your website) where anybody can ask to join without making an enquiry. They’re emailed a link and only join when they click it, so nobody can put someone else’s address on your list. If the address already belongs to a customer, that customer is updated rather than duplicated. Your availability and courses pages link to it while it’s on.
• Importing a list you already have, under Import a list you already have on the Marketing page. Save your spreadsheet as CSV with an Email column and a Consent column saying Yes for everybody who agreed; only they come in, and a file without a Consent column is turned away. Say where they agreed, and that’s kept with each of them as the record. Check the file shows exactly what would happen before anything is saved. Anybody already on file is updated rather than duplicated, and anybody who has ever unsubscribed or asked to stop stays off — an old list can’t sign them back up.
• If they tell you themselves, open the customer, click the marketing line under their details and choose Record consent, saying how they told you: in person, on the phone, by email or in writing.

Stopping. Every mailshot carries an unsubscribe link, and Gmail and other mail apps show their own one-click unsubscribe button too. Either takes them off at once, and so does marking one as spam. You can also withdraw consent from the customer’s marketing panel. Either way they stop getting news and offers, and still get everything about a booking.

The record. Each customer’s marketing panel lists every time consent was given or withdrawn, when, and how. That is what you would show if anybody asked how you came to be emailing them, and it can’t be edited, only added to. The tick box above the customer list shows just those who’ve agreed, with a count.