You will be able to sort an existing list or contact export into contacts you can email for marketing and contacts you cannot.
Mei Ling bakes from home in Punggol, and you met her in Lesson 1.2. She had a fair idea of how big her email list was, but she couldn't say where each address came from or what each person had signed up for. Most small business owners are in the same position.
A contact and consent audit splits every email address your business holds into two groups: people you can send marketing email to, and people you can't email for marketing yet. It's where Lesson 1.2, "Consent under the PDPA: what you need before you send", and Lesson 1.3, "The Spam Control Act and unsolicited email", turn into something you do with your own records. Set aside about half an hour. It takes longer if your contacts sit in many different places.
Addresses are rarely kept in one place. Some will be in your email tool, some in a spreadsheet from a market stall, some on your phone and some in an export from an old event registration. Start by noting every place an address could be. Check your email tool's existing list or lists, and the contacts or customers table in any CRM, booking system or online shop you use. Look for spreadsheets from events, workshops, open houses or market stalls. WhatsApp Business contacts count if they include an email address. So does your own inbox, where people wrote in to ask about prices. So do paper sign-up sheets or business cards sitting in a drawer.
Export whatever you can, and save each source as its own file. Don't combine them until you know the history of each one. If you merge too early, people who unsubscribed or never agreed in the first place can end up back on the newsletter.
For each source, write down what people were told their address would be used for at the time they gave it. If the original form, sheet or checkout page still exists, go back and read the actual words. If you don't know what people were told, write "unknown" and don't guess.
Small differences in wording give a different consent answer. An online order form might have had a separate marketing checkbox, or it might not. A market sheet headed "Join our mailing list" is a different consent situation from a lucky draw sheet with no heading. Someone who messaged you on WhatsApp with a question was promised nothing about marketing.
Every source goes into exactly one of three groups.
Clear marketing consent covers people who were told they would get marketing email and actively agreed. For example, they ticked a box that wasn't already ticked, or joined a list labelled as a newsletter. You may send these people marketing email.
Transaction only covers people who gave you their address to buy, book, get a quote or ask a question, where nothing was said about marketing. You can email them about their order or enquiry, but they can't go on the newsletter.
Unclear covers sources where you can't tell what people were told, or where the record is gone. Treat these people as not yet consented.
Keep a do-not-email note as well, separate from the groups. Anyone who has unsubscribed or asked you to stop, from any source, goes on it. The note overrides whichever group the person would otherwise be in.
Mei Ling's email tool held 180 subscribers (an example figure, like all her numbers that follow) who signed up through the newsletter form on her website. That form said what she would send and how often, so she put them under clear consent. Her online order form held 410 customer addresses. The form had no marketing checkbox until last month, so those customers gave an address only to place an order, and that source went under transaction only. About 60 people in her inbox had asked for a quote and never ordered, and they also went under transaction only. She also had a spreadsheet of 95 addresses from two weekend markets. It was headed "Lucky draw: leave your email" and said nothing about a mailing list, so she marked it unclear. Seven people across her sources had asked her to stop emailing, and she added them to the do-not-email note.
Your audit sheet has one row per source, so a newsletter list, an order form and a market spreadsheet make three rows. It needs these seven columns:
source name where it lives what people were told date range collected number of contacts consent group can receive marketing (yes or no)
Before you total the contacts who can receive marketing email, take out duplicates. One person can turn up in more than one source. The most common case is a newsletter subscriber who has also placed an order.
Mei Ling's rows added up to roughly 745 addresses before duplicates were removed (180 + 410 + 95 + 60 = 745), and 180 of those could receive marketing. She removed the duplicates, because some of her subscribers had also ordered from her. She had hoped for more than 180, but 180 is her true number.
You can't add transaction-only or unclear contacts to the newsletter. If these are customers you have actually dealt with, you can plan a permission email instead. It's one email that asks whether they want to hear from you, with a clear button to join and nothing else. Anyone who clicks to join is added with a proper consent record. Anyone who doesn't click is left alone.
Check the email against PDPC guidance before you send it. Whether even a single permission email is appropriate depends on your relationship with these contacts and what they were told. Never send a permission email to bought, scraped or unknown addresses, under any circumstances.
Mei Ling planned one permission email for her 410 past customers and 60 enquiries, 470 contacts in total (410 + 60 = 470). She left the 95 lucky draw addresses out of it entirely.
Your audit is finished when every source you found has its own row, every column is filled in, and you have a total of contacts who can receive marketing email today. Keep it with the consent line you wrote in Lesson 1.2. Together they are the starting record for the rest of this course.
Work through the steps with your own contacts now, and build the spreadsheet the activity below describes.
Make a spreadsheet with one row per contact source showing what people agreed to, how many contacts it holds and whether they can receive marketing email.
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