What is a compliance gate?
Why check directly before sending?
Days or weeks can pass between the start of a campaign and an individual send. During this time, customers withdraw their consent, change addresses or reach the defined contact limit. A check only at import or at campaign launch would miss these changes. Content can also change – for example when a new text variant is added that has not yet been reviewed.
The term compliance gate therefore describes a single point that every send must pass – with no way around it. In the PBM Campaign Platform, the gate checks per contact and channel: is there consent for this channel? Has consent been withdrawn? Has the contact limit been reached? Has the content passed the compliance and tone-of-voice check? The outcomes are unambiguous: send, fall back to a permitted channel, postpone or stop.
The gate cannot be switched off. This is deliberate: a safeguard that can be deactivated under deadline pressure does not protect you at the decisive moment. Every outcome is logged and can be traced later – for the data protection officer as well as for internal audit, who want to know why a particular customer did or did not receive a message.
9,312 contacts receive the email, 2,604 without email consent receive a letter instead, 41 who have withdrawn consent are stopped, 523 have reached their contact limit and are postponed. (Sample data)
Distinction
| Term | Difference |
|---|---|
| Approval (four-eyes principle) | people approve a campaign or content once; the gate then checks every send |
| Filter at import | checks once when data is loaded, not at the time of sending |
| Spam filter | sits with the recipient and assesses incoming emails, not lawfulness |
Related pages
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Platform
Consent & compliance -
Platform
AI with approval