Express Consent & Privacy

Commercial Electronic Message

A CEM is a message sent by electronic means. Email, instant message, tweet, voicemail, or text to another electronic address with, as its purpose or as one of its purposes, to encourage participation in a “commercial activity.”

Express consent

Express consent means that a person has agreed to receive a Commercial Electronic Message, either in writing or digitally. The recipient must take proactive action to indicate their express consent (in other words, express consent must be obtained through an opt-in mechanism, e.g. signing up at your website).

Implied consent

Implied consent means that you haven t received express consent, but you have reason to believe you have permission to send a CEM. You may have an existing business relationship (see below) or non-business relationship with the recipient.

Existing Business Relationships 

An existing business relationship is formed by a voluntary, two-way communication between a client or business subscriber and a member with or without an exchange of consideration based on an inquiry, application, purchase, membership or transaction.

Why Obtain Express Consent

Ensures compliance with privacy laws when conducting email & print marketing campaigns, protects your business from potentially harsh and sizeable monetary fines, and enables commercial electronic messages (CEM)s to be sent to clients on behalf of members by Ensemble.

10 things to know about privacy

1. Consumers must be informed anytime your company experiences any type of data breach.
2. Consumers have the right to opt-out of data collection and can request you delete all their records.
3. Consumers have the right to opt-out of the sale of their personal information.
4. Personal information = information that relates to, describes, is capable of being associated with, or could be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular consumer or household.
5. Tell recipients where you’re located. Your message must include your valid physical postal address.
6. Tell recipients how to opt-out of receiving future emails from you.
7. Give a return email address or another easy Internet-based way to allow people to communicate their choice to you.
8. You must include the option to stop all commercial messages from you. Make sure your spam filter doesn’t block these opt-out requests
9. Honor opt-out requests promptly within ten business days.
10. Once people have told you they don’t want to receive more messages from you, you can’t sell or transfer their email addresses, even in the form of a mailing list.