With regulations like GDPR expanding our rights to privacy, it's important to have proper authorization from someone before sending business communications to them. You can create a custom opt-in field in Insightly to track the people who have given you permission to contact them.
Opt-in requirements are already included in marketing products like MailChimp, so this isn't something new to most marketers. If you're using our MailChimp integration, importing records from other marketing applications, or even sending non-marketing emails directly from Insightly, making sure someone has opted in is pretty important.
Here are a few suggestions to keep track of opt-in options:
Custom fields
There are a few different custom field types that could help you track opt-in selections. Depending on your needs and requirements, this can be one simple field or something more complex to capture more data.
Checkbox field
Creating a custom checkbox field is the easiest way to track opt-ins. When it's checked, the contact has opted in. This is great if you only do outreach using one method, like email.
When you communicate with contacts in multiple ways, such as email, phone, or direct mail, you'll have to create a checkbox for each option.
Dropdown field and multi-select dropdown field
For Insightly customers who use multiple communication types, a dropdown field with different combinations can be used. For example: Email, Phone, Email and Phone, None.
Creating a multi-select dropdown field is another option, but it does have the potential to create confusion. With a list that includes Email, Phone, Direct Mail, and None, it's possible that a contact will indicate an invalid combination, like Email and None.
Your default value should be None or null for this type of field.
Date fields
Including an Opt-in Date field gives you additional information about the contact's selection. This can be manually updated when someone records the contact's choice, but you can also use Insightly's workflow automation to update the field every time an opt-in field is selected.
See How to create a custom field and watch our Workflow Automation video.
Web to Lead and Web to Contact Forms
With Insightly's webforms, a visitor to your website can choose to opt-in when they submit their information. You can include most of the custom fields types when creating your webform. The multi-select field is not available for Insightly's webforms.