Understanding Consent Requirements in Zoho Campaigns

Zoho Campaigns: Which Contacts Can You Email or Text?

One of the most common points of confusion with Zoho Campaigns is exactly which contacts you're allowed to email or text. Zoho operates a consent-only platform, meaning it isn't enough for an address to simply exist on a list somewhere; you need to be able to show the contact genuinely agreed to hear from you, obtained in one of a specific set of acceptable ways.

Acceptable Ways to Obtain a Contact

You can send Email Campaigns and SMS Campaigns to a contact if any of the following genuinely applies:

  1. They gave their email address or mobile number as part of downloading something from your website, or while ordering or negotiating a purchase from you.
  2. They subscribed to a newsletter by filling in a form on your website to receive your marketing by email or SMS.
  3. They gave their details while entering a contest, event, or survey you ran, provided you told them at the time that you'd be sending marketing emails.
  4. They ticked an opt-in box on an online form, as long as that box was unchecked by default and they were told the emails or texts would be commercial in nature.
  5. They handed over a business card and expressed willingness to receive commercial communications, for example by dropping it into a bowl at your trade show booth, where willingness is presumed.
  6. They were referred to you by an existing customer or subscriber specifically to receive your marketing.

When You Must Not Email or Text a Contact

  • The contact was bought, rented, loaned, or otherwise acquired from a third party, rather than collected directly by you.
  • You haven't contacted a legitimately obtained contact in the last 2 years. Even a genuinely consented contact goes stale after this point.
  • The address or number was obtained by scraping, or by copying and pasting from somewhere on the internet.
  • The contact has unsubscribed, or otherwise told you they don't want to receive your marketing.

What Counts as Valid Consent

Consent needs to be explicit, and it needs to have come from a genuinely conscious, deliberate act by the contact, rather than being inferred or assumed. If consent wasn't captured electronically, such as at an in-person event, you'll need written confirmation from the contact to back it up if ever challenged.

Why this matters in practice: Beyond being a contractual requirement to use Zoho Campaigns at all, consent quality directly affects deliverability. Sending to poorly consented, stale, or scraped contacts drives up bounce and spam complaint rates, and Zoho enforces hard thresholds on both, a campaign that exceeds them can be automatically paused or your account terminated without prior notice. Good consent hygiene isn't just a compliance box to tick; it's what keeps your emails actually landing in inboxes.

Tools Zoho Campaigns Gives You for This

Zoho Campaigns includes several features specifically built to help you capture and evidence consent correctly, including Double Opt-In (requiring an email confirmation before a subscriber is added), dedicated Consent Emails for specific processing purposes, and Manage Consent for tracking who has agreed to what and when.

See our related articles on Creating a Consent Email, Manage Consent, and Double Opt-In. This is a summary in plain language and doesn't replace reading the full, current Zoho Campaigns Terms of Use directly.
Need help? 1 Cloud Consultants can help you audit your contact lists against Zoho's consent requirements and set up compliant opt-in capture going forward. We're not lawyers, so for specific legal compliance questions we'd always recommend your own legal counsel. Book a discovery call with 1 Cloud Consultants.