Can EU email marketing use soft opt-in?

Treat soft opt-in as available only when every Article 13(2) condition is documented before launch. The contact must be a customer contact collected in the context of a sale of a product or service. The sender must be the same natural or legal person that obtained the electronic contact details. The campaign must market that sender's own similar products or services, not unrelated offers, third-party offers, affiliate campaigns, or group-company lists.

The customer also needs a clear and distinct chance to object, free of charge and in an easy manner, when the details are collected and again in every marketing message if the customer did not initially refuse. If the acquisition screen, checkout, order flow, CRM record, or message template cannot prove those facts, route the campaign to consent review instead of soft opt-in.

Keep evidence that proves the exact soft opt-in path, not a generic marketing approval. The file should connect the customer record, sale context, sender identity, product-similarity assessment, opt-out presentation, message template, and suppression-list enforcement.

Suppression evidence matters because Article 13(2) depends on the customer not having initially refused and on the customer receiving a continuing objection opportunity. A working suppression list should record collection-stage refusals, later unsubscribe requests, bounced or invalid stop addresses, and downstream systems where the block must be honored before the next send.

Escalate when any condition depends on interpretation: whether a free trial is a sale, whether a service renewal is similar enough to a new product, whether a group affiliate is the same sender, whether the collection notice was clear, or whether national law adds stricter rules for a channel, recipient type, or local implementation.

The ePrivacy Directive is implemented through national law. Article 13(3) leaves Member States a choice for other direct-marketing cases, and Article 13(5) requires protection for subscribers that are not natural persons under Union and applicable national law. The Commission has also described the proposed ePrivacy Regulation as a way to replace the current Directive with one directly applicable set of rules instead of national variations. Do not add country-specific rules, penalties, or exemptions unless they are separately grounded for the relevant country.