POPIA

POPIA Overview

Below we have outlined how POPIA affects your website, your clients and the Prop Data Manage application. First off, let's discuss consent.

Consent

The importance of consent

As a real estate business, you collect data across a range of electronic communications including your website engagement, email, SMS, WhatsApp, and e-subscriptions. According to POPIA, to collect and process data, you will need clear consent from your data subject i.e. the person to whom the personal information relates.

POPIA defines consent as “any voluntary, specific, and informed expression of will in terms of which permission is given for the processing of personal information”. Let’s
break this down:

Voluntary
Your data subject must have a choice to consent or not. You can’t assume they have consented if they have not opted in for communications — it has to be explicit.‍

Specific
The consent must relate to a specific purpose — there is no blanket consent. If a data subject, for example, has only consented to property alerts, you can’t send them your newsletter.

Informed
You need to provide your data subject with enough information to make an informed decision to consent to your marketing.
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Prop Data has applied a number of changes across our ecosystem to help you meet the requirements for consent and processing information lawfully.

Prop Data’s ecosystem modifications

Our updates meet POPIA’s requirements and are geared to help you build trust with your clients. Prop Data’s changes apply to your website, management system, and HubSpot feeds.

Website Updates

Cookies consent
Cookies are small text files your website sends to a website user’s device. Your website uses this to monitor the user and remember bits of information about them. The revised cookie consent notice alerts your website users that this process is happening for various tracking purposes. More information on how these cookies are used is covered in your website’s privacy policy which is linked to in the cookie consent notice.

Revised privacy policy
The privacy policy is located on the footer of your website. It explains how you collect, store, protect, and use personal information. Your website now holds a revised privacy policy that is linked to various access points on your website such as the cookie consent notice and forms.

Revised website enquiry forms
Previously, your website enquiry forms were pre-checked as a way to build your property alerts and newsletter databases. Now all the checkboxes will be unchecked by default, and a user will have to expressly check them to give consent. Prop Data has also included some new descriptive text under each form. This references
your revised privacy policy and emphasises that the data subject consents to your company holding and processing their information should they submit an enquiry.

Revised consent and subscription profile management
This update empowers a data subject to manage their consent and subscriptions held within Prop Data’s management systems. They can now access a new Profile
Management Page on your website at any point.

The Profile Management Page allows the data subject to see all the data you house on their profile based on their email address. It allows them to consent to you holding and processing their information. It will also allow them to manage specific consent and subscription functions:

• Consent to hold and process their personal information (separate from direct marketing consent)
• Consent to direct market (SMS/message, email, phone)
• Subscription management (mail lists, alerts, enquiries)

Direct emails point to the Profile Management Page
Prop Data’s management system releases various types of marketing communication or templated system communication pieces for you:

• Property email alerts
• Property match emails
• Branch newsletter emails
• Enquiry emails
• System-based WhatsApp communications

These will all include links to the Profile Management Page that will help data subjects manage their consent over time. All of these communications are encrypted based on the user’s email address so they cannot be hacked.

Request for information held page
A data subject can visit the Request for Information Held Page (Request Information on the footer of your webpage, i.e. at the bottom) on your website at any time, enter their email address, and receive an encrypted email with a link to the Profile Management Page. They can then update their consent as they wish. For example, they can unsubscribe from email alerts or newsletter subscriptions.
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Any updates to the Profile Management Page are fed back to Prop Data Manage as well as HubSpot. The Request for Information Held Page will be present on the footer of your website. If a data subject approaches you to find out what information you house on them, you can point them to this page, and they can request it themselves.

Or you can send them the Request Information URL, example is as follows: https://www.yourdomain.co.za/request-information/ replacing 'yourdomain' with your actual Prop Data Website domain.

Changes to consent and subscriptions will be notified to the data subject, branch agent, and dynamically update Prop Data Manage and your HubSpot CRM
Prop Data will send any consent and subscription changes to both you as well as the data subjects themselves. If anything changes through the Profile Management Page, there will be system-generated emails to notify the various parties about it.

Prop Data Manage Updates

Your Prop Data Manage application will display the status of all of your Contact, Profile and Lead records in the status that the client has chosen when they received and clicked on the opt-in mailer from your website, the opt-in mailer is sent to all Contacts that are created on the system. This includes buyers, tenants, sellers and landlords. Below is an example of the opt-in mailer.

Contact, Profile, Lead and Subscriptions Status

If you have been using Manage for a few weeks you would have noticed that not all your lead enquiries or contacts are in an active status. In fact, most will be in the No-Consent status, this is due to a few factors that we will cover when we address each status individually. How these statuses are allocated is how the individual concerned has addressed the opt-in mailer that they have received. Your Prop Data website sends the opt-in mailer to all buyers, tenants, sellers and landlords on your company's behalf when their details are added to the system, either manually through the Manage app, via a portal lead that is received or when a form is completed on your Prop Data website.

Once the individual has set their preferences, the record cannot be edited by you, unless for the purpose of making the Contact, Lead etc. Inactive.

When adding a new Contact to the system, you will only have 2 status options, Non-Compliant and Inactive. Add new contacts in the Non-Compliant status and the system will send the opt-in mailer and allow the individual to manage their data.

Dates and times of user-managed consent and subscription updates
On Prop Data’s management system, you will be able to view when data subjects provided consent. See the image below.
A record of consent for direct marketing channels
On Prop Data’s management system, you will be able to see all the channels a data subject has consented from which to receive direct marketing.

Active Status

Active subscribers are those who have consented to the holding and processing of their data as well as receiving email alerts/newsletters.

No-Consent

No-Consent subscribers (No Marketing Consent) have consented to the holding and processing of their data but have opted out of automated email communication. They might, however, have given permission for direct messaging/sms or calls. Leads that are fed in from portals such as Property24 and Private Property will be in this status and will remain in this status unless they set their preferences via the opt-in mailer. Read more on this below in the Double opt-in paragraph.

Non-Compliant

These individuals haven't taken any action via the opt-in mailers: Therefore, there is no consent to hold their information and no communication is permitted, electronically or telephonically.

To view a Contacts Communication Preferences, navigate to Clients > Contacts > Select a Contact and then click on View > Details.

Double opt-in emails for manually captured new client records, portal-fed leads and social and campaign-fed leads where no consent is provided.
Portals will not pass direct marketing consent to Prop Data on your behalf through portal leads Prop Data obtains through feeds. As these leads filter into Prop Data’s
management system, we will send each one of them a double opt-in email. This will be a branded email where we encourage data subjects to give you consent for direct marketing purposes. This will allow Prop Data to help you market to them through alerts, newsletters, and WhatsApp communications.

For each lead ingested into the system, where Prop Data does not have marketing consent, we will reach out with this once-off double opt-in email which will encourage the data subject to visit the Profile Management Page and apply the consents needed.

Double opt-in refers to the portal opt-in email and the subsequent opt-in email that will be sent from your site.

HubSpot and POPIA

Bi-directional consent feed between Prop Data Manage and HubSpot CRM
This update manages consent between HubSpot and Prop Data Manage. Consents obtained in either platform will be exchanged and kept in sync.
If you obtain consent in Prop Data Manage, this will then pass down to and update the corresponding data subject record in HubSpot. This will allow bulk communication out of HubSpot to happen.
If consent is removed in Prop Data Manage, this will then pass down to and update the corresponding data subject record in HubSpot. Bulk communication will not be allowed for that individual.

Useful Links

1. Protection of Personal Information Act (POPI Act): Read about the Act in a convenient web format. POPIA Website
2. The POPI Act is set to impact your real estate agency: A basic introduction to the Act with some immediate steps every real estate business should take. Intro
3. What happens if you aren’t POPIA compliant?: A summary of all the ways POPIA non-compliance can impact your real estate business. Non-Compliance
4. POPIA Information Officer: the new role in your business: Under POPIA, the Information Officer is a compulsory role within your real estate business. Learn more about this important role here: Info Officer
5. POPIA will save your email newsletter marketing: POPIA opens up great business benefits, especially for your email newsletter marketing. See how it can help you win new subscribers and retain your current ones. Benefits
6. Use POPIA to build trust with your real estate clients: Instead of viewing POPIA as an inconvenience, it can be a valuable way to build trust with data protection. Trust

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