This FAQ is designed to serve as a basic intro to POPIA and data privacy legislation; it’s a poor substitute for formal legal advice. Always run things passed your lawyer to be sure.

POPIA applies to any personal information you have on an identifiable individual or organisation. This can include:

• A person
• A prospective customer
• An existing customer
• An employee
• A prospective employee
• An ex-employee
• The public
• Visitors
• Companies

1. Use First-Party Data

Our subscription forms make it easy to collect and manage subscribers. Wherever possible, use these forms to collect data directly from the person you’re communicating with.

2. Use the Correct Channels

You can use our platform to communicate via email, SMS, voice broadcasting, and push notifications. All these channels require consent. Make sure the person you’re communicating with has given you permission to communicate with them via these channels.

3. Share Relevant Information

If a person on your list has consented to receive your newsletters, you may only send them your newsletters. Any content that isn’t related to this will require additional consent.

4. Communicate at the Right Time

Automation can help you send the right message at the right time. But according to POPIA and the CPA, there are some days and times in the week when you aren’t permitted to send marketing communication. These include:

• Weekdays before 08h00 or after 20h00
• Saturdays before 09h00 or after 13h00
• Sundays or public holidays

5. Let Them Unsubscribe

In addition to getting adequate consent, POPIA requires that you send bulk communication to must also be able to opt out of your communications at any time. For this reason, it’s critical that you always include an opt-out function in your messages – the platform will switch these contacts ‘off’ in your list.

The unsubscribe functions available for the different channels include:

• Email: Unsubscribe link in the footer. When composing an email, you’ll find this on the footer tab in the Sending Options step.
• SMS: A message in the SMS saying, ‘To opt out, reply STOP’ – this is inserted into your SMS by default. When creating your SMS, you can select or unselect the unsubscribe message via a checkbox.
• Voice broadcasting: Listeners can press 9 to unsubscribe. We add 3 seconds on all voice broadcasts to give listeners time to do this, so please plan this extra time into your call duration and include text for it in your text-to-speech message.

Want to know more? In this POPIA guide, you learn about the real impact of POPIA on marketing, what to do about it, and how not to kill your email list in the process.