Marketers urged to design consent around buyer value, not just opt-ins
At a MarTech Conference session in November 2026, panelists argued that brands should treat consent as an engineered part of the customer relationship, aligning preference choices, data systems and timing with what buyers actually want.
Brands that focus only on collecting opt-ins are missing where much of the commercial value lies, according to a MarTech Conference session in November 2026 titled «Beyond the opt-in: Engineering consent for better marketing». The panel argued that getting a sign-up is only the start, and that the real question is whether marketers optimize for the number of sign-ups or for the value of the relationship that follows.
The session was moderated by Jeanne Jennings, founder of Email Optimization Shop, and featured panelists Joss Merckaert of fifty-five, Zack Meszaros of OneTrust and advisor Sal Tripi. An audience poll during the session offered a snapshot of current practice: more than half of attendees said they use standard preference centers, and about a third said they operate out of fear of non-compliance rather than out of a deliberate strategy.
A central theme was that opt-in gives access, while post-opt-in engagement is what builds pipeline. Panelists identified a common failure in which marketers begin sending heavy volumes of messages before checking whether the buyer finds the content valuable. Tripi recommended stating the value exchange clearly at the point of data collection, so that people understand what they receive in return for sharing information.
Meszaros pointed to timing as a lever. He described contextual consent requests, asked at the moment when the benefit is obvious to the person, as more effective than generic prompts. According to the session, contextual timing lifted opt-ins to high-value channels by 5% to 10%.
Jennings drew a distinction between consent and preferences. In her framing, consent defines the actions a company is permitted to take with a person's data, while preferences capture what that person wants to receive. The two serve different strategic purposes, and declared preferences and observed behavior should not be treated as interchangeable. The panel also noted that sensitive browsing topics, such as medical content, require particularly careful handling, and that expectations differ between enterprise and consumer buyers.
The panelists stressed that consent choices only work if systems act on them. Preference decisions must sync across customer data platforms, mobile device management tools and outbound marketing engines. That requires API architecture and governed web tracking scripts. Merckaert said that many breakdowns originate in silos between legal, security, marketing and IT teams. Tripi added that empowered data governance functions should work in partnership with marketing rather than apart from it.
The session also addressed artificial intelligence. Generative AI tools depend on clean data tied to verifiable consent, and revocations need to propagate instantly through training pipelines. Jennings urged marketers to prioritize high-signal data over raw volume.
Tripi offered a practical starting point: an audit that walks through the consent journey from the buyer's perspective. Where the value trade-off is unclear to the person being asked, he said, that is a signal the flow needs revision. A recording of the session is available on demand following the conference.
Source: martech.org
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