Contact Consent in Customer Insights: Journeys

Are emails marked as spam even though the profile has Opt-in entered in the contact point consent?
Or maybe the mailing is blocked even though the address is not on the Suppression list?
The source of these problems may be a lack of proper management of Contact consents such as DoNotEmail, DoNotBulkEmail, and DoNotTrack.

What is a Contact consent in real-time journeys?

Contact consent in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys acts as an additional consent filter that respects customer choices. The system checks consent at the level of a specific contact point (e.g., email address, phone number) and for a specific purpose or communication topic before a message is sent. These consents are useful if you are still collecting customer data for contact point consents or want to have more control over communication with your contacts, e.g., even though you have the contact details of the company’s CEO, you do not send him commercial emails (after private arrangements), even if he originally opted in.

Microsoft recommends: If you plan to manage consents using contact point consent, do not rely on DoNotEmail, DoNotBulkEmail, and DoNotTrack. Instead, use contact point consent records as your sole source of actual consents.

How to start using Contact consents?

By default, consents included in Contact are not taken into account. To change this, go to Settings -> Feature switches and enable the Check contact consent in real-time journeys toggle in the compliance category.

Interactions and visibility on contact record

Contact consents are visible in a given record in the Details tab, in the contact preferences category. There, you can check what consents have been granted for individual channels and topics. This way, you can quickly see whether a given message will be delivered or blocked.

• For commercial emails, if the contact has DoNotEmail or DoNotBulkEmail set to “Allow,” they will receive these types of emails.
• A transactional email will be sent if the DoNotEmail field is set to “Allow.”
• To be able to include tracking links and pixels in a given message, the DoNotTrack field must be set to “Allow,” and the contact point’s consent records must also allow tracking.

How to diagnose when Contact consent prevents messages from being sent?

While viewing the selected journey, go to the Delivery Funnel and open the “Blocked” list. The reason for the block will be described in the Reason column as “No consent.” When you hover your mouse over “Details,” you can see the full explanation for the block (you can also expand the column). In the case below, the DoNotEmail attribute is set to true, meaning “Do not allow.”

Click the profile name in the list to go directly to the contact record. An entry informing you that the email has been blocked should be visible on the timeline.

To confirm the existence of the problem and potentially fix it, you need to go to the Communication tab, which should display a message informing you about the problem.

After clicking on the “Manage” button, a pop-up will appear with options allowing you to immediately resolve the issue – change your profile settings.

Summary

At first glance, an additional switch limiting messaging capabilities may seem unnecessary, but its actual usefulness depends on how well you manage consents. If all contacts have filled in Opt-in, Opt-out – in fact – Contact consents will not be required. If this is not the case, they prove to be a necessary tool for operating in accordance with the letter of the law and maintaining brand credibility.

Źródła:

• Microsoft Learn – Real-time marketing compliance settings