Consent categories

This guide introduces consent categories and explains how to configure them in Bloomreach.

Overview

Consent categories let you manage and organize data into categories, each with its own consent status and approach to data processing and communication.

Categories let you approach each customer in the way they consented to or for which they have a legitimate interest. Bloomreach has three category types:

Category type	Use
Consent	Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a customer must give consent freely and actively. You can define multiple consent categories, such as "Newsletter" and "Push notifications". You need to track or import consents for every customer.
General consent	A system setting in Bloomreach that lets you send campaigns to all your customers, including those without consent or who have already opted out. Use it only for transactional emails or important warnings, and use it carefully.
Legitimate interest	Processing data under legitimate interest is more flexible than active consent. It lets you process personal data without asking customers for consent. In Bloomreach, you define a legitimate interest group by creating an automatic filter based on customer behavior, such as having a purchase.

Configure categories

Create and configure consent categories in Project settings > Privacy management > Consents.

Then select from these categories in the settings of each campaign you're about to launch. This ensures that you show, for example, a push notification only to customers who gave the appropriate consent.

Choose the category you want to apply in the settings of each campaign.

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Important
To delete a consent category that doesn't have a bin icon, go to Data Manager > Mapping and check the mapping of the affected categories. The delete button (bin icon) appears once you uncheck the boxes in that section, leaving them empty.

The following sections explain how to configure each of the three main consent categories.

General consent

Use General consent in very few instances. When you use it, customer consent preferences are ignored, and you may approach customers without any legal basis. Keep permission to use General consent very limited.

The best practice is to disable it and re-enable it only for specific purposes where you're sure its use is legal and appropriate. In Project settings > Privacy management > Consents, choose the channels where you can use General consent.

Choose which channels can use General consent

If you disable a channel, use Check dependencies to see which campaigns and scenarios use General consent, so you know which campaigns need adjustments to their consent category. General consent is disabled only after you adjust the running campaigns.

Check dependencies to identify campaigns using General consent before disabling a channel.

Consents

You can create custom consent categories based on the specific consent you received from your customers. Multiple consent categories are preferable for two reasons. Different customers consent to different things. Customers can also opt out of only some of the communications they consented to, instead of withdrawing consent to all of them.

Create and manage custom consent categories.

Setting	Description
Color	Distinguish between consent categories with different colors.
Consent category	Maps the consent category to the tracked consent event. The value must match the `category` attribute in the consent event. Use a simple, lowercase English word for easy troubleshooting. Customers don't see this field.
Description	Description of the consent category. Customers also see it on the consent page.
Name	Human-readable name of the consent category. Customers also see it on the consent page.
Public API	By default, new consent categories have tracking of consents from the public API disabled. In practice, consent events with `source=public_api` are ignored or invalid. Leave this option disabled to prevent attackers from changing user consents at will by obtaining a public API token. Instead, use consent double opt-in or tracking of consents by API with a private key, which is tracked as `source=private_api`.

Consent category name translation

If you use the same consent categories for multi-language audiences, set up translations for their names so each customer sees the correct translation. To set it up, open the consent category as shown in the following image.

Set up name translations for consent categories used across multiple languages.

Legitimate interest

You can apply a legitimate interest to all your customers or only a specific segment, using the filter in the Applies on column.

Use the Applies on filter to define which customers a legitimate interest applies to.

Legitimate interest has the same configuration as consents, except for Applies on. The remaining settings are the same as for consent.

For Applies on setting:

Define the segment of customers this legitimate interest applies to.
- All customers: Every customer in Bloomreach has this legitimate interest.
- Filtered customers: Only the segment defined by the filter has this legitimate interest.
This filter isn't static. It always reflects the current state based on customers' behavior.

Opt in to or out of a legitimate interest

Customers can opt in to or out of a legitimate interest in the same way as for consent. These options are also visible on the consent page.

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Important
Tracking an explicit consent event that contains a legitimate interest consent category always overrides the legitimate interest filter.

Configure tracking consent categories

Tracking consent categories control whether Bloomreach tracks opens and clicks for each recipient. For email, a category can gate opens, clicks, or both. Learn how to set them up in Configuration of the tracking consent categories.

Updated 12 days ago

What´s next?

Learn how to track consents and opt-outs.

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