Retention of giveaway data: the three-year rule and where it starts

Everyone knows "three years". Almost nobody knows when they start counting, and that single question decides the fate of half a database.

The rule, as written

Prospect data used for marketing purposes may be kept for three years from collection, or from the last contact originating from the prospect.

The key word is "originating". The clock doesn't restart because you sent something; it restarts because the person did something.

What resets the clock, and what doesn't

Counts as contact from the prospect:

• a request for information;
• a click on a link in one of your emails;
• a reply, an entry to a new promotion, an order.

Does not count:

• opening an email. This is explicit, and it's the detail that surprises most. A recipient who opens your messages for three years without ever clicking remains, under the rule, three years without contact.

The logic holds up: an open is a technical event, often triggered by a mail client preloading images, sometimes by antivirus software. It demonstrates no intent. A click does.

What happens after three years

Once the period lapses, you may make contact once to ask whether the person wishes to keep receiving your communications. Absent a positive and explicit response, the data must be deleted or archived.

Two words matter here. "Positive": silence is not agreement. "Explicit": an inverted unsubscribe link — "click if you no longer want this" — does not produce a positive response, it produces an absence of response.

What this means for a giveaway

A giveaway creates a large number of contacts sharing one date. Three years later they all expire at once. This is predictable, and yet it is always discovered too late.

Three practical consequences:

1. Date your entries at the source. Without a reliable collection date you won't know what to purge, and caution will make you keep everything — precisely what the rule forbids.
2. Separate the two periods. Promotion data (entry, draw, prize delivery) and marketing data don't follow the same calendar. The first expires with the promotion and its complaints; the second has its own clock.
3. Measure clicks, not opens. If your tool can't say who clicked and when, you cannot tell which addresses are still active under the rule.

Purging is not a loss

The usual objection is losing contacts. It turns around: addresses three years old without a single click no longer produce conversions, but keep producing complaints and bounces — damaging your domain's sending reputation, and the deliverability of your messages to the contacts who are active.

Purging improves the performance of what remains. It isn't only an obligation, it's hygiene.

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