Email news after GDPR

GDPR took effect last month, and many organizations sent policy updates to your inbox. We took action on our email lists to acquire explicit consent from all subscribers. You can read about other action we took to prepare for GDPR, but this post is all about what we communicate about through the Drupal email list.

The Drupal email list had almost 64,000 subscribers receiving various newsletters from our programs, and we knew running a re-consent campaign would have an impact on the number of subscribers in each of our newsletter groups. It seemed worth the potential loss, because numbers don't always tell the full story of the impact communications can, and do, make for an organization.

There were two problems with our list that kept us from delivering tailored messages with the Drupal community: old or insufficient data on subscribers and limited newsletter options. To make the list more effective, we changed the structure of our subscriptions to focus on the type of message we're sending, rather than being aligned with Drupal Association programs.

By using Mailchimp's GDPR tools and suggestions to run a re-consent campaign, we asked for explicit consent to this new subscription structure. We enabled the Marketing Preferences section provided by Mailchimp, and now in order to get email, you must select Email within that section of the form. This has been confusing for some people. Here is an easy way to look at it: The top section, where you choose your lists, is simply choosing the topics that interest you; the bottom section, where you click “email” in marketing preferences gives us explicit permission to email you about these topics.

The impact of running the re-consent campaign has been a loss of a vast majority of our list. Is this a problem? It depends. Ideally, only people who want to read our news are now subscribed and we will see an increase in open rates. And hopefully community members won’t be hearing about updates or announcements from other sources, rather than from our newsletters first - if you do, please let us know.

Please take a moment and check that your subscription settings are how you want them. If you want to receive news, check the Email box under Marketing Preferences. (Enter your email address in this form and you'll get a message to update your subscription)

If you are in any way interested in Drupal, you don't want to miss our messages. In particular, Bob Kepford (kepford) does a fantastic job of curating content for the Drupal Weekly Newsletter. There's something for everyone, every Thursday. Likewise, the special offers messages from our partners can help you learn about and save money on services. Thanks for keeping informed!

There are some communications which are not impacted by our subscription structure change. These include security notifications, blog post notifications, Drupal.org system messages, and any transactional messages - for instance, if you register to attend DrupalCon, we will still email you about DrupalCon.