Consent management and preference management are very similar concepts, but they are definitely not the same. Consent management has to do with the collection and respect for the individual's consent regarding how his or her personal information can be used, stored, and shared, whereas preference management refers to offering additional flexibility to the person when it comes to interactions with a particular brand.
The point is that the difference between the two should be taken into account, since many companies tend to confuse these two terms and use them interchangeably.
What Is Consent Management?
The purpose of consent management is to get and manage an individual's consent for data processing. It involves informing the user, getting consent, recording it, and applying this consent further on systems and processing operations. It is strongly connected with privacy regulations as most of them obligate organizations to get and prove valid consent for using personal data in some cases.
For this reason, consent is referred to as a legal consent. An individual may give or not to give consent to some types of data processing, for example, analytics, advertising, or sharing personal information. In other words, according to many laws, consent management is all about the right of the organization to process personal data.
What Preference Management Involves
The distinction between preference management and others lies in the fact that the former revolves around a user’s preferred way of engagement, whereas the latter involves a company’s legal right to use someone’s data for its purposes. Preference management enables users to select the type of content they prefer, the frequency at which they would like to receive information from a business, and even the communication channel – whether it’s e-mail, SMS, or push notifications.
These options are more about customer experience than legal permissions granted to a company to engage customers in one way or another. While you may be okay receiving monthly news about a new product via e-mail, but not weekly updates, you may prefer receiving security alerts via SMS and marketing notifications via e-mail only.
The Key Difference
The simplest way to make sense of the difference is the following: while consent responds to the question “May we?”, preference management responds to the question “How would you like this to go?”.
Thus, whether you ask a person whether it’s ok to process their data for personalized ads purposes, and whether you ask them whether they want newsletters about new products, weekly news updates or event invites – in both cases the first one pertains to consent, while the second to preference.
That is exactly the reason why preference management should never replace consent management. Should the law require that you get your user’s permission before a certain processing operation, then a standard preference center will not be sufficient. That said, consent management, in turn, will not provide you with a good customer experience on its own either.
Why Organizations Get Them Confused
This occurs due to the fact that both consent and preference management relate to user choice and they could appear in the same interface. A cookie banner could ask the user for permission, while the settings panel could allow the user to manage his communication preferences. To the user, both mechanisms could look like privacy control tools.
However, from an operational and legal standpoint, both differ significantly. Consents require logging, purpose mapping, evidence of collection, and management of the withdrawal of consent as per the legal standards. Preferences will be more connected with CRM systems and customer engagement systems which will determine the type of engagement that a user will receive.
Both Are Important for Reasons Below
An organization that pays attention only to consent remains compliant but frustrated the user. The user can be lawfully agreeing to receive messages, but he or she will get frustrated if not able to control frequency and content of those messages. This may cause unsubscribes and less customer interaction and trust.
At the same time, an organization that pays attention to preferences without controlling the consent becomes faced with a far bigger problem. The organization may have the most perfect customer experience but does not have a legal background to perform operations with the personal information.
The best programs in terms of privacy and customer engagement include both levels of controls. Consent management guarantees the organization is allowed to perform particular actions, whereas preference management enables the organization to execute them in a right way.
Examples
Here are some examples that will help clarify the difference:
- Consent: When a cookie banner asks for permission to use analytics or advertising cookies, it requests consent.
- Preferences: A client who decides whether to receive newsletters, updates about new products, or invitations to webinars expresses his/her preference.
- "Do not sell or share my personal information" – this is either consent or legal rights control, depending on the local legislation.
- When a client can select an email as opposed to an SMS message, he/she makes a choice of preference.
In some situations, both processes may take place in the same journey. First, the user provides his/her consent to receive marketing messages, and then the user decides what kind of messages he/she would like to get.
What Companies Should Develop
A mature system needs to differentiate between the permission to operate legally and the preference for customer engagement, even when these two are presented within a single integrated user experience. The companies need to document consents, allow withdrawal, and link choices to processing purposes and systems. Preference centers should also be easy to use, flexible, and helpful enough to let customers customize their experience on their own rather than opt-out of everything.
The rule of thumb is simple: the users need to know what they are consenting to, and they need to have control of that consent afterwards. It means that requests for consent need to be clear and specific, while preference tools should be available and easy to change.
Combining consent and preference management into an either/or choice does more harm than good. Consent serves as a basis for lawful operation, while preference management enhances the quality of the interaction within those bounds.
More information can be found about cybersecurity, threat intelligence, digital risk, privacy compliance, and consent management via IntelligenceX and ConsentX. IntelligenceX enables organizations to detect and analyze cyber threats by conducting targeted digital intelligence investigations. ConsentX, on the other hand, equips companies with all the tools needed for global privacy compliance via consent management, cookie compliance, and data privacy.
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