How did this email permissions item get here? How do I integrate GDPR with Mailchimp?

My JotForm forms are integrated with Mailchimp. I recall that this "Marketing Permissions" item appeared on my JotForm forms several months ago.

At the time it appeared, there were three options: Email, Direct mail, and Customized online advertising. I deleted the other two options because I didn't need them. 

I remember this worked at the time. If someone clicked "Email", then on Mailchimp it would say "Opted-in to 'Email'".

Recently someone changed something on Mailchimp that broke the JotForm/Mailchimp integration. I reintegrated a form with Mailchimp now, but this Marketing Permissions item doesn't work anymore. In fact, it doesn't even show at the bottom of the form on my website! It does show on the JotForm-edit form area, but it doesn't show on my website.

Further, now it doesn't have any effect on contacts brought into Mailchimp. I set it up with a double opt-in. So with my test contact I signed up, clicked to sign up to the list on the double opt-in email, and then when I check on my test contact in Mailchimp, it says, "Opted-out of 'Email'". (I also tried changing the setting on this JotForm Marketing Permissions item so that it will have email checked by default, but my test signups in Mailchimp still say, "Opted-out of 'Email'".)

I searched the web for information about this "Marketing Permissions" item on JotForm and I can find no evidence that this thing ever even existed! It would almost seem that I put it in myself, but I remember that I did NOT put it in myself. 

With the current setup it's not clear whether my subscribers are currently giving me permission to email them.

- If someone signs up and then clicks on the double opt-in email it will say "subscriber" & "opted out of email".
- If someone then clicks on that double opt-in confirmation email and tries to then opt out, my Mailchimp contact record will still say "subscriber" & "opted out of email". (Only if someone clicks unsubscribe at the bottom of an email will the become "unsubscribed.")

So all that to say I'm completely confused; here are questions:

- Is this "Marketing Permissions" item really a thing? If so, how can I get it working again? That was an ideal arrangement.
- If this is not a thing or no longer a thing, then what is my ideal way to bring contacts into Mailchimp so that it's clear whether they are currently giving me permission to email them?

The marketing permissions is only to EU users, this will appear as long as the list is GDPR, the option allows to add a checkbox or use any existing field on your form: 

I would recommend you to update your integration in order to make sure the marketing permissions feature works again, to update the integration you may edit your form on the form builder and then go to the settings tab, under the integrations section you should search the MailChimp integration and edit the current one. You may also select an existing field on your form. 

You may also set the "Send Contacts To Mailchimp" option to "Only if user agrees" so the user is asked before being added to the list. 

If you have questions, let us know. 

Hi Kevin_G Thanks so much. That's helpful. 

I ended up removing and then re-adding the integration, and I set it to "add to Mailchimp only if the user gives permission." Then it placed "Newsletter" in there with some permissions language. I did that to several forms and it was working for all of them, but then for the last three I tried to set up it suddenly stopped working. It stopped working even though I think that with these last three forms I was doing the same thing as I was previously doing. I'll look into this this afternoon, but I just wanted to confirm really quick: You didn't make any settings changes on my forms did you? (I doubt you did, but just wanted to check in order to avoid confusion.)

Correct, I performed the tests on a cloned form of yours on my end, I only checked the settings on your integration without changing anything, please kindly try setting up the integration again and if this does not work, let us know so we can have a look on this. 

Looking forward to your response. 

Thanks, it looks like Mailchimp was the source of the problem it started blocking the email address I was using for testing. After I used a new email address, it started working again.

Regarding how to tell if subscribers have given me permission or not, I suppose I will use "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" as my permissions indicator instead of the GDPR fields. This way will work better with JotForm.

Sounds good, I see that the "subscribe" permission checkbox is already added in your form. If you need any further assistance with this, please let us know. We will be happy to help.