What is the difference between consent and preference management?

While consent management and preference management may sound the same, it's important to understand just how different the two are. In order to build a privacy first and trustworthy consumer brand, it’s vital to understand and implement both comprehensively.

Consent management relates to the legal requirement to notify your user and, where legally necessary, collect their consent to the processing of their personal data for a specific purpose, often related to particular types of advertising or marketing activities.

Preference management provides your users with the ability to make choices about the frequency or nature of the communications or service details they might receive from you.

For example: if a user visiting your site agrees to opt-in to the use of their data for targeted advertising and to the use of their email address for email marketing, this would be considered consent management. In turn, that same user might then select to only receive emails on a monthly basis, or on particular topics of interest, which is considered preference management.

Consent and preference management often go hand-in-hand and for a truly seamless, trustworthy consumer experience it's recommended that you consider a comprehensive platform that provides both consent and preference management in a unified experience for your users.