A summary of the UK's direct marketing rules on a single slide, covering opt in and soft opt-in rules for e-mail, SMS, phone and postal mail.

1. Marketing
channel
Consent rules for
Business-to-Consumer (B2C)
marketing
Consent rules for
Business-to-Business (B2B)
marketing
E-mail Opt-in, unless ‘soft opt-in’* rule
applies
Opt-out
SMS Opt-in, unless ‘soft opt-in’* rule
applies
Opt-in**
Phone (live calls) Opt-out – screen call list against UK
Telephone Preference Service first
Opt-out – screen call list against UK
Corporate Telephone Preference
Service first
Post Opt-out Opt-out
Overriding requirement: Marketing communications must always include an unsubscribe option
for recipients to opt-out, regardless of channel used.
* What is the ‘soft opt-in’ rule? The soft opt-in rule permits marketers to send e-mail / SMS marketing to recipients if (a) the recipients’ details
were collected “in the course of a sale or negotiations for a sale” (this includes completing a product enquiry form or requesting a quote), (b) the
marketing concerns first-party marketing of similar products and services, and (c) the recipients were given the ability to opt-out at the time of
data collection and in each subsequent e-mail (and did not opt-out, obv!). Soft opt-in cannot be used by charities, political parties or other NFPs.
** Technically, consent requirements may depend on who is the ‘subscriber’ of the mobile service – i.e. whether the mobile is supplied to the
employee by its company (in which case opt-out maybe possible) or whether the employee is using his or her own personal device (under BYOD).
In practice, since difficult for marketers to distinguish between the two, safest to assume opt-in in all cases.
UK direct marketing rules on a single page!
Hot tip:
The GDPR does not
change these rules –
they are set out in a
separate piece of
legislation (the UK
Privacy and Electronic
Communications
Regulations) that
continues to apply
post-GDPR.