You collect the following information for secondary purposes, such as marketing, administering a customer loyalty program, or customer relationship management:
In these circumstances, you have to give the customer an opportunity to tell you they don’t want you to use their information for that purpose. This is called an “opt-out”.
Opt-outs must be clear, easy to understand and easy for the customer to do. You can have an opt-out box on a paper-based or web application form, for example, that tells customers that if they don’t want to receive promotional material in the mail, just check here. You may want to let the customer know what they’ll be missing – special deals and new product information, for example – but don’t minimize, hide or obscure the opt-out. And don’t make it complicated, like requiring the customer to call a special phone number between certain hours. The point is to let the customer decide.