We are excited to announce that the Mautic 7 Columba edition beta version is now available for public testing!

With Mautic 7, we are focused on removing outdated code and functionality to ensure Mautic remains secure and performant aligned with modern coding standards, while also delivering more improvements and features to Mautic.

We’ve worked really hard to get to this point – a huge thanks to all the community members who have contributed to the release!

IMPORTANT NOTE:

This is a pre-release, which means it should never be used in a production environment. At this stage we do not test the upgrade path nor do we guarantee upgrading from Beta to later versions. 

Please only use it in testing environments, and report back your findings.

The major release focuses on a major update to Symfony 7, but it also brings several user-facing changes and some changes that are relevant for developers. Read on for more information.

What’s new in Mautic 7 Beta Columba Edition?

User-facing changes

• Improvements to user experience for scheduled sending of emails (#14254)
• Improvements in bounce recognition for Outlook and Exchange (#15371)
• New slider form field type (#15332)
• Improvements in user experience for text message and web notification previews (#15410 and #15247)
• Add Projects support for stages, dynamic web content and points (#15409)

Developer-facing changes

• API Platform implemented (see /api/v2) (#14812)
• Ability to define multiple mailer DSNs (#14254)
• Ability to replace DB cache with Redis or similar service (#15554)
• Add events in the Projects bundle to allow bundles/plugins to extend entity type to model key mappings (#15485)
• Projects unified in API endpoints (#15507)

Download Mautic 7 Beta and help speed up the releases

All these exciting new features and code improvements now need to be extensively tested so they can get into the hands of our users as soon as possible.

As an open source project, the Mautic Community is the foundation of our progress, so join us today and help speed up the release of Mautic 7 into the General Availability version.

The General Availability release of Mautic 7.0 is scheduled to be released in Q4 2025, and with your help we’ll make that deadline.

Here is what you can do to help:

Each Friday we will be having our usual Open Source Friday community sprints, a great way to have mentored onboarding to get started with contributing to Mautic. Join us on Slack and head over to #new-contributors if you’d like to get started, or jump right into any of the teams, whose channels start with #t-<team name>.

Right now we have Hacktoberfest running, which means there’s even more onboarding support from our awesome team leads!

Check the features, enhancements, refactoring and bug fixes which are slated for release in the Release Candidate, and help us by testing them. Check our docs on testing – which can almost always be done locally or using a GitHub Codespace in the browser by any user of Mautic. Don’t forget to leave a formal review, that counts as a contribution to Mautic!

Help us with completing the updates needed for the end-user and developer documentation by joining #t-education on Slack. We have regular onboarding calls to help you get started.  There’s everything from updating screenshots to reviewing our code examples, something for everyone!

Useful resources

https://github.com/mautic/mautic/blob/7.x/UPGRADE-7.0.md – developer-facing changes

7.0.0-alpha release – https://github.com/mautic/mautic/releases/tag/7.0.0-alpha

7.0.0-beta release – https://github.com/mautic/mautic/releases/tag/7.0.0-beta

7.0.0-Release Candidate milestone: https://github.com/mautic/mautic/milestone/127 

7.0.0-General Availability milestone: https://github.com/mautic/mautic/milestone/128 

But I’m here to tell you something that should shift your perspective: Open source is more than just code. It’s a vast, vibrant ecosystem built on collaboration, where every skill set has a vital role to play. We need to stop correlating contributions solely with writing programming code.

I’m Ayu, and I currently serve as the Assistant Team Lead for the Education Team at Mautic. I can speak to this from experience: my first contribution to Mautic was a no-code submission in 2024. It’s precisely this kind of contribution that drives Mautic’s core belief: bridging the gap for low- and no-code contributors. We want to actively support and encourage all types of contributions that help our projects and our entire community to thrive.

The scope of contribution

When we look at the different ways people can contribute to a project, we can organize them into a comprehensive scope.

At one end is traditional programming, which involves writing complex application logic, fixing bugs, or developing new features. This is the conventional open source contribution most people think of.

The low-code contributions

Documentation may look like a simple task, but it’s one of the most critical parts of any project. Good documentation is what makes a project usable, welcoming, and successful.

Fact is, even writing documentation often requires a bit of code. Whether you’re writing in Markdown, ReStructured Text, or another markup language, you’re using structured syntax. You typically use a code editor to write and format it, and you engage with the project’s codebase to submit your changes, usually through a Pull Request (PR). Because of this, we can safely categorize documentation as a low-code contribution. It still utilizes technical tools and syntax, but the focus isn’t on application logic.

The crucial no-code contributions

Now let’s move to the other end of the scope—the pure no-code contributions. These efforts are crucial for a project’s survival and growth, yet they often involve zero lines of programming code.

Contributors can add massive value to our projects in areas like:

• Testing & feedback (PR reviews): Checking for clarity and grammar in documentation, or testing bug fixes and new features, confirming the logic, and providing detailed feedback.
  
• Design & user experience (UX): Creating mockups, designing social media flyers, or crafting a new website layout in tools like Figma or Canva.
  
• Education & training materials: Writing blog posts, tutorials, and success stories on our blog and knowledgebase, or making tutorial videos, streaming demos, or recording project updates on a platform like YouTube.
  
• Community engagement, marketing & translations: Running social media campaigns, managing the project’s presence, translating project materials, helping with logistics for community events, or triaging issues.

These are massive, valuable contributions. They keep the project healthy, make it more accessible, grow the user base, and ultimately allow developers to focus on writing code. The open source community, at its best, sees all of these as valid and important contributions to their project or organization.

The challenge of recognition: counting no-code in Hacktoberfest

The challenge arises when organizations, especially during events like Hacktoberfest, try to recognize and quantify these diverse contributions.

Hacktoberfest requires a set number of merged PRs to count toward challenge completion, which works perfectly for traditional programming and low-code contributions. But how do we count those invaluable, vital no-code contributions? How can we ensure that these contributors are recognized and celebrated alongside the coders?

It’s a problem we, like many others, set out to solve in Mautic. We wanted a clear, fair, and open way to count contributions that don’t result in a traditional code PR.

Mautic’s approach to no-code recognition

We established a system using a dedicated low-no-code repository. It’s a simple yet effective mechanism for tracking non-code work.

Here’s how it works:

1. Work on a deliverable: The contributor does their work using their preferred public tools. It might be a Google Doc for an article, a YouTube channel for a tutorial video, a Figma or Canva link for a design, or a link to the specific feature PR they reviewed or tested. The key is that they must have a publicly accessible “media” of their work that they can link to and share.
   
   
2. Document and submit: They create a new entry in a dedicated Markdown file within our special repository. In this entry, they must list:
   • Their name and GitHub handle
   • Links to their specific contribution (the Google Doc, the YouTube video, the Figma or Canva board, etc.)
   • A brief description of the contribution
3. The PR is the count: They then create a PR to be merged. This PR counts towards their Hacktoberfest contribution. It serves as a verifiable acknowledgment of the valuable work completed outside the codebase.

A call for greater appreciation

More open source projects need to find ways to appreciate and formally recognize their no-code contributors. They are the unrecognized champions of the community. Without the writers, designers, testers, marketers, and community organizers, our projects would stagnate, become unusable, or be forgotten.

This system is just one way to do it—and it works for us. It establishes a clear record, gives contributors a measurable result for their efforts, and fits perfectly with the PR-based structure of events like Hacktoberfest.

If you’ve been hesitant to contribute to open source because you don’t feel like a “coder,” please let go of that idea. Your skills are not only needed but also valuable, and they deserve recognition.

Look for projects that actively welcome contributions across the entire scope. Ask how you can help test, write, or design. You might find that your biggest contribution doesn’t involve a single line of application code.

The future of open source is inclusive. Let’s build it together, with every skill and every contribution appreciated and counted.

It’s in this spirit of collaboration that we make this exciting announcement: Nominations are now open for the Mautic Council, and we’re looking for two driven and community-focused individuals like YOU to step up.

The Mautic Council is a critical component in shaping our future and amplifying the voice of our community in decision making. Serving on the Council offers a unique opportunity for you, as an individual, to influence Mautic’s trajectory, lending your unique perspectives and experiences to its development and governance. There are seven seats in total on the Council, and the term of appointment is three years – read more in the Governance Model and meet the current Council here.

This year, we’re saying a big thank you and goodbye to Ekkehard Gümbel and Prateek Jain, who are coming to the end of their initial two-year term on the Council (initial terms were three, two and one year to ensure members didn’t all leave in the same year, incoming members will serve for three years).

So why should you nominate someone (or yourself) for the Mautic Council?  

1. Steering Mautic’s future course: Council membership allows you to play a direct role in critical decisions affecting Mautic’s future as a product and the wider community.  
2. Voice of the community: As a Council member, you’re in a position to represent the needs, ideas, and suggestions of the Mautic community.  
3. Leadership development: Being a member of the Mautic Council aids your professional development, sharpening your leadership and governance skills in a real-world, dynamic context.  

To nominate someone (or yourself), the proposed candidate will have to be an individual member of Mautic.

Diversity is a cornerstone of our community, so we warmly encourage nominations for individuals from different backgrounds, affiliations, and areas of expertise. 

Nominees should have a strong commitment towards open source principles, possess an in-depth understanding of Mautic, and be willing to proactively work with other council members and the broader community. We particularly welcome those who have experience in business development, leadership and scaling organizations as this will also be a big focus for Mautic in the coming years.

To be successful as a Council member, you are expected to attend two 2-hour meetings each quarter (one at the middle, and one at the end) and have 5-10 hours per week on average to dedicate towards preparing for the meetings, working on any tasks assigned to you through our executive committees, and generally keeping in touch with both the Council and the wider community. We’re not a Council that sits back and reads reports (although we do that too!), we’re actively involved in shaping the future of Mautic, and we can’t wait for you to join us.

Interested? Then take that next step and put forward your nomination here. 

Nominations will close on 10th November 2025, so make sure you don’t miss this exciting opportunity.

Fill the council seats with the power of the community, let your voice be heard, and help Mautic reach new heights. Happy nominating!

Have questions? Please drop into #wg-governance on Slack, or drop me an email at ruth.cheesley@mautic.org.

What a sovereignty-first marketing stack actually looks like

Reimagining our marketing operations starts with a simple but powerful question: what would it look like if sovereignty was built in from the beginning?

A sovereignty-first marketing stack embraces platforms and technology without necessarily rejecting them. It focuses on making conscious choices – selecting tools and building structures that enhance autonomy, adaptability, and transparency at every level – rather than abandoning what already works.

So, what does that look like in practice?

• Data lives where we choose in a sovereignty-first stack, our data isn’t trapped in a black box. We decide where it’s stored, whether that’s a private server, a regional cloud provider, or a self-hosted environment. The key is portability and visibility. We know where the data is, who has access, and how to move it if we ever need to.
  
• Interoperability is the norm, not the exception. Our tools talk to each other via open APIs or standard protocols. No closed ecosystems. This gives us the flexibility to evolve, swap out tools, or expand our stack without rebuilding from scratch.
  
• Open source plays a major role where possible, our core systems are open source or at a minimum, based on open source, whether it’s our marketing automation, analytics, or CMS. These tools offer transparency, community-driven improvements, and fewer surprises when compared to closed platforms.
  
• Workflows are modular, not monolithic. Rather than locking our strategy into one mega-suite, we connect best-fit tools for specific tasks: lead scoring, segmentation, campaign delivery, content hosting, and analytics. This modularity helps us adapt quickly when priorities shift or new regulations emerge.
  
• Privacy is a design choice. From the first campaign to our ongoing data strategy, privacy is baked in rather than treated as an afterthought. We should use tools that minimize tracking by default, respect user consent, and make compliance easier across markets.

This kind of stack goes beyond simply being ethical or future-proof; it also emphasizes agility. In a rapidly changing environment where platforms evolve, regulations shift, and customer trust is delicate, maintaining control over our tools and data offers a significant competitive advantage.

In a sovereignty-first stack, data lives where we choose, whether that’s on a private server, regional cloud, or a self-hosted environment. We know who has access, how data moves, and how easily it can be backed up or migrated if needed. Interoperability is baked in through open APIs and standard protocols, reducing lock-in and making change easier.

Open source tools are the backbone of this approach. They give us visibility into how data is handled and allow us to customize workflows, integrate with other tools, and adapt quickly. Workflows are modular, not monolithic, each piece of the stack is selected for its purpose, with flexibility to swap or expand without rebuilding everything from scratch.

If digital sovereignty is the goal, then open source tools are one of the clearest paths to getting there. We explored why sovereignty matters in marketing – from data ownership to vendor independence. But for many marketers, the next big question is: where do I start?

The good news is that a privacy conscious, customizable, and resilient marketing stack is more accessible than ever. A growing number of open source tools are built with marketers in mind, offering the flexibility and transparency we need without locking ourselves into proprietary systems.

Auditing your marketing stack to uncover hidden dependencies

Before making any changes, it’s essential to understand the tools we currently rely on. Every marketer uses platforms to execute campaigns, track engagement, and nurture customers but how deeply are we tied to them?

A thorough audit helps us spot where lock-ins and risks exist. Start by listing every tool you use across your marketing lifecycle from awareness, engagement, conversion to retention and ask:

• What critical function does this tool serve?
• Where is the data stored, and who controls it?
• Can we export all data, including historical activity?
• Are workflows dependent on this tool, or adaptable elsewhere?
• What happens if this tool becomes unavailable?

You may uncover surprising vulnerabilities: proprietary analytics that restrict data export, platforms that fragment user insights, or tools that amplify risk if a policy change occurs.

Identifying these gaps helps us prioritize where sovereignty matters most. Do we need to swap out tools immediately? Not necessarily. The goal is to understand dependencies and introduce flexibility where possible starting with tools that create the biggest risk or inefficiency.

Exploring open source alternatives for sovereignty

Once we’ve mapped our dependencies, we can start exploring open source solutions that align with our sovereignty goals. These tools are designed to give us more control, greater transparency, and stronger privacy protections all while being supported by thriving communities.

1. Content Management Systems (CMS)

Content is still king. We use it everywhere on websites, in emails, and even on billboards or display boards. It helps us tell our story, educate customers, and build trust. A CMS makes it easy to create, organize, and share content without needing technical expertise, allowing teams to collaborate and publish quickly.

Beyond these basics, having control over where and how content lives is essential. Proprietary systems can limit customization, integration, or scalability. Open source CMS platforms give us the freedom to tailor layouts, manage content securely, and scale easily all while keeping data where we choose. They also help with SEO, multilingual support, and seamless integrations, making content management more flexible, transparent, and future-ready.

When we want full control over how and where it lives, open source CMS platforms are our friend.

Drupal: Powerful for complex websites with custom content types, strong security, and enterprise-level scalability.

Joomla!: Versatile and user-friendly, ideal for mid to large-sized sites with powerful built-in multilingual and SEO features.

TYPO3: Enterprise-focused CMS built for large-scale, multilingual websites with advanced access control and workflow management.

Ghost: Great for blogs, newsletters, and content marketing. Clean UI and optimized for performance.

Strapi: A headless CMS that lets us manage content across multiple channels through APIs.

2. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Owning our customer data and the journey they have with our business is central to ensuring digital sovereignty. A CRM helps us gather and organize customer information like contact details, purchase history, interactions, and preferences in one place. This makes it easier to understand our audience, build stronger relationships, and offer personalized experiences.

CRMs are used to track leads, manage sales pipelines, automate follow-ups, and deliver targeted campaigns. They help teams work more efficiently by providing a complete view of every customer’s interactions and needs. With this insight, we can tailor offers, improve customer service, and build trust over time.

Using an open source CRM means we control how data is stored and shared. We can customize workflows, integrate with other tools, and avoid being locked into expensive or rigid systems. This gives us the flexibility to grow and adapt while ensuring our customer data stays secure and under our control.

There are many open source CRM tools out there, including:

EspoCRM: A simple yet powerful CRM that can be self-hosted. Useful for small teams who want full visibility and control.

SuiteCRM: A more robust alternative, with marketing, sales, and service modules.

3. Web Analytics

To build effective campaigns, we need visibility into what our users are doing. Web analytics platforms collect and analyze data from websites, apps, and other digital channels to help us understand audience behavior, track engagement, and measure campaign performance.

They show us which pages users visit, how long they stay, what actions they take, and where they drop off. With these insights, teams can optimize content, improve user experience, refine targeting, and make data-driven decisions that maximize impact.

Open source analytics tools also let us own our data and prioritize privacy.

By keeping analytics in-house, we gain both transparency and flexibility, ensuring that the data we collect works for our marketing goals and respects user privacy.

Plausible: A lightweight, privacy-first analytics platform. It does not use cookies or collect personal data, making it easy to comply with regulations like GDPR.

Matomo: Offers deeper analytics and session-level tracking similar to Google Analytics (with options to turn off tracking beyond 24 hours), but with data ownership and privacy at the core.

4. Marketing Automation

Marketing automation has become a cornerstone of modern marketing strategies. It helps teams stay connected with their audience, deliver timely messages, and personalize experiences at scale all without having to manually manage every interaction. From nurturing leads with tailored email sequences to scoring prospects based on behavior and driving repeat engagement, automation tools have made it possible to work smarter, not harder.

However, not all marketing automation tools are created equal. Some are built to serve large enterprises with complex workflows, while others focus on simplicity and accessibility for small teams. As organizations grow, they often face difficult choices between ease of use, cost, and how much control they have over their data and processes.

HubSpot, Marketo, Mailchimp, and Zoho are widely used tools that have helped countless organizations manage campaigns, nurture leads, and grow customer relationships. Each platform offers a range of useful features tailored to specific needs whether that’s ease of use, enterprise-level personalization, or affordability.

Yet, as teams increasingly prioritize data ownership, customization, and long-term flexibility, it’s important to recognize the limitations these proprietary solutions present. From restricted data control to costly premium plans, they can create dependencies that slow down innovation or tie growth to vendor terms.

For teams aiming to build a resilient marketing strategy, exploring open source alternatives or hybrid setups can offer more freedom and control without sacrificing functionality. The key is not to reject established platforms outright, but to thoughtfully assess where sovereignty matters most and where flexibility can be introduced.

One of the most powerful tools in any marketer’s arsenal, marketing automation helps us nurture leads, personalize experiences, and stay relevant.

Mautic: A feature-rich open source marketing automation platform that offers email campaigns, segmentation, lead scoring, and CRM integrations. Mautic lets users control data and infrastructure while enjoying flexibility to customize workflows.

BillionMail: It is an open source platform primarily focused on email delivery, newsletters, and customer management, but lacks advanced automation functionalities such as workflows, lead scoring, segmentation, or triggered campaigns that are key components of marketing automation platforms like Mautic.

Plunk: Plunk is an open-source platform for managing marketing, transactional, and broadcast emails with basic automation features, but it lacks advanced capabilities like multi-channel marketing, lead scoring, sales stages, and account-based marketing features that Mautic offers for more comprehensive and targeted marketing.

erxes: It is an open source platform that offers a comprehensive suite of tools for managing customer experiences, making it a strong choice for businesses seeking an integrated platform. However, potential users should be aware of its limitations, particularly concerning email integration, user interface consistency, customization options, scalability, and licensing terms that Mautic provides.

5. Customer Data Platforms (CDPs)

For teams looking to build meaningful relationships with their customers, having access to unified, accurate, and actionable data is essential. This is where Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) come into play. A CDP helps organizations bring together customer information from multiple sources such as web interactions, email responses, transaction history, support tickets, and more into a single, comprehensive view.

With this unified data, teams can better understand their audience, create personalized experiences, and deliver relevant messages at the right time. Whether it is tailoring a product recommendation, segmenting users for targeted campaigns, or automating workflows based on customer behavior, CDPs unlock insights that can transform how brands engage with their customers.

But beyond simply collecting data, CDPs help ensure that the way customer information is handled is consistent and compliant with privacy laws like GDPR or CCPA. They enable marketers to manage consent, respect user preferences, and build trust while improving the efficiency of their campaigns.

For those looking to unify customer data and power personalization, open source CDPs are emerging fast. These platforms provide the same benefits such as data unification, personalization, segmentation, and automation, but with greater transparency and flexibility.

Apache Unomi: An open-source customer data platform designed to centralize user profiles and deliver personalized experiences while respecting privacy and consent standards.

Tracardi: A real-time, open-source CDP and marketing automation platform that tracks user behavior, segments audiences, and automates actions across channels.

RudderStack: Collects and routes customer event data across tools. Developer-friendly and privacy-focused.

Start where we need the most freedom

We don’t need to overhaul everything at once. A sovereignty-first approach is a mindset that starts with conscious choices. Whether it’s selecting a new tool, revising a workflow, or planning a campaign, each step should enhance autonomy and resilience.

Open source communities are eager to help, and service providers offer support when needed. It’s not about doing it alone, it’s about being intentional and informed.

Every change we make today builds a stronger, more adaptable marketing stack for tomorrow. Let’s start where we need freedom most, audit where hidden dependencies lie, and lean into tools that support long-term growth, trust, and agility.

We don’t need to switch everything at once, but we can start with one decision: the next tool we onboard, the next process we revise, or the next campaign we build, we should do it with sovereignty in mind.

If you’re interested in exploring features that help maintain control and transparency in your marketing stack, see how Mautic approaches digital sovereignty: https://mautic.org/features/data-sovereignty/

When our marketing stack is built entirely on proprietary platforms, what we actually have is access, not ownership. We rely on third-party systems to collect, store, and interpret our customer data. While that may feel convenient, it also means our insights, audience intelligence, and long-term relationships are dependent on external systems that operate on their own terms.

Now consider what happens when one of these platforms increases its prices, removes a feature we rely on, or even discontinues a service altogether. Suddenly, what once felt like a stable system begins to feel fragile. Many marketers are just one unexpected product decision away from a campaign delay, a data gap, or worse. And if we ever try to move our data to another platform, we quickly realize how limited our options are. We may be able to export a list of contacts or segments, but not the valuable behavioral history or interaction data that gives us marketing depth and meaning.

Understanding digital and data sovereignty

This is where the idea of digital sovereignty becomes critical. Digital sovereignty is the belief that individuals, organizations, and even governments should have the authority and ability to control their own digital ecosystems. For marketers, this means choosing how and where data is collected, stored, and processed. It also means having the power to select tools based on values and strategy, rather than being locked into one company’s timeline or pricing model. When we operate with digital sovereignty in mind, we stop being a passive user of technology and start becoming the designer of our own infrastructure.

Connected to this is the principle of data sovereignty, which focuses on the physical location of our data and the legal systems that apply to it. When our marketing platform stores data in a different country from where our customers are based, that data becomes subject to the laws of the hosting country. This can lead to unexpected challenges around compliance, privacy, and governance. With growing regulatory pressure and rising consumer expectations around data protection, marketers can no longer afford to overlook where their data is stored and how it is being managed.

How open source empowers marketers

Open source tools offer a clear and powerful solution. For marketers, open source is no longer just a technical curiosity. It is a strategic decision that allows for independence, innovation, and better alignment with privacy values. By using open source software for marketing automation, analytics, or customer data management, we can host data where it makes sense for our business, shape the tools to fit our exact needs, and choose how and where our tools are hosted, whether by ourselves or through the provider that best fits our needs, with the freedom to change that choice at any time, a flexibility rarely possible with proprietary software.

Open source also gives us transparency and clarity. We can review how the code works, understand exactly what happens with our data, and adapt the software to support our marketing objectives. If a team has a unique requirement, chances are someone else in the open source community has faced the same challenge and already contributed a solution. We gain the benefit of collective intelligence without sacrificing control.

This approach also supports ethical marketing. When we know what our systems are doing with our data, and when we have control over it, we are more likely to build campaigns that respect customer privacy and meet regulatory standards. We are not only protecting a brand but also strengthening trust with the people we are trying to reach.

Choosing digital and data sovereignty is not about rejecting innovation, excluding working with specific countries or avoiding external tools. It is about making sure those tools serve our goals, rather than shaping them. It is about long-term flexibility, sustainable growth, and staying ready for whatever comes next.

This conversation stayed with me because it highlights one of the most important challenges we face in marketing today: how do we create personalized experiences that genuinely serve people without crossing the line into creepy surveillance?

The trust equation in personalization

In my experience leading the Mautic community, I’ve learned that ethical marketing comes down to a simple equation: transparency + genuine value + respect for boundaries = trust. When we get this right, personalization becomes a tool for building relationships rather than exploiting data.

The reality is that people want relevant content. They want to feel understood and valued. But they also want to maintain their dignity and privacy. These aren’t competing interests – they’re complementary when we approach them thoughtfully.

Building consent that actually means something

Our open source approach to marketing automation gives us a unique opportunity here. Unlike closed systems where consent often feels like a legal checkbox, we can build genuine preference management into our strategies.

Start with clear conversations

Instead of burying data collection in terms and conditions, have honest conversations with people about what you’d like to know and why. When someone subscribes to your newsletter, explain: “We’d love to send you content about topics that interest you most. Would you like to tell us which areas you’re curious about?”

Make preferences easy to manage

In Mautic, you can create preference centers that put people in control. Let them choose not just what they want to hear about, but how often they want to hear from you and in what formats or through what channels. Some people love daily tips, others prefer monthly roundups. Some like to get email updates, others prefer SMS or WhatsApp. Honoring these choices builds the foundation for long-term relationships.

Be specific about data use

When someone shares information with you, be clear about how you’ll use it. “We’ll use your job title to send you resources relevant to your role” is much more trustworthy than vague promises about “improving your experience.”

Moving beyond demographic assumptions

One pattern I’ve noticed in our community discussions is how often demographic targeting reinforces harmful stereotypes. Instead of assuming that age, gender, or location determine someone’s interests, we can use behavioral data more thoughtfully.

Focus on demonstrated interest

If someone downloads three whitepapers about email marketing, that tells you more about their current needs than their age or industry. Use Mautic’s progressive profiling to gradually understand what people actually care about based on their actions.

Let people self-identify

Rather than making assumptions, create opportunities for people to tell you about themselves. Progressive forms, survey campaigns, and preference updates allow people to share what’s relevant to their current situation.

Question your own biases

Before creating any campaign, ask yourself: “What assumptions am I making about who needs this content?” Challenge those assumptions by testing different approaches and measuring results.

Quality over quantity in messaging

This principle connects deeply to what’s becoming ever more important in today’s world of messaging overwhelm – the concept of mindful communication. Every message we send should have a clear purpose and genuine value for the recipient.

The four-question test

Before sending any marketing message, I encourage our community to ask:

1. Would a reasonable person expect to receive this communication based on the consent they have provided?
2. Does this genuinely help the person receiving it?
3. Is this the right time and the right channel for this message?
4. Would I appreciate receiving this if I were in their situation?

If you can’t answer yes to all four, consider waiting or reframing the message.

Ask these questions again any time there is a major incident happening in the world or in a specific country or community that you work with when you have campaigns in-flight – perhaps it’s appropriate for you to pause all outbound communication if there’s a particularly upsetting situation whereby your marketing messages could cause upset to the communities involved.

Respect natural rhythms

Use Mautic’s send time optimization and frequency capping features to respect when and how often people want to hear from you. Business to business communications might be more appropriate to only be sent during weekdays. It’s unlikely that someone is going to want to receive multiple marketing messages from you within the same day, so put in place  caps to prevent that from happening.

The real cost of getting this wrong

I’ve seen organizations struggle with the aftermath of creepy marketing practices. Beyond the immediate damage of lost trust and unsubscribes, there’s a deeper cost to your team’s morale and your organization’s reputation in your community.

When we treat people as data points rather than humans, we lose sight of our purpose as marketers: to create valuable connections that serve real needs.

Building for the long term

Our commitment to open source principles gives us an advantage here. We’re not beholden to advertising revenue models that prioritize data extraction over user welfare. We can build marketing strategies that align with our values and serve our communities authentically.

Create value first

Every interaction should leave the person better off than before. Whether it’s a helpful tip, relevant resource, or simply respect for their time, lead with generosity.

Build systems for accountability

Use Mautic’s reporting capabilities to track not just opens and clicks, but also unsubscribe patterns and feedback. Create regular reviews of your marketing practices with your team.

Stay connected to your purpose

Remember why you’re doing this work. If your goal is to genuinely help people solve problems and achieve their goals, that intention will guide you toward ethical practices naturally.

Moving forward together

The conversation about ethical personalization is ongoing, and it’s one where our community’s voice matters. As users of open source marketing automation, we have the opportunity to model a different approach – one that prioritizes human dignity alongside business goals.

I’m curious about your experiences with this balance. What strategies have you found effective for personalizing without being invasive? Where do you draw the line between helpful and creepy?

The future of marketing depends on how thoughtfully we navigate these questions together. Let’s continue this conversation in ways that honor both our business objectives and our shared humanity.

What ethical challenges have you encountered in your marketing personalization efforts? I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences in building trust-based relationships with your audiences.

The question shouldn’t be whether we should personalize, as much of the research shows that it leads to a better experience for customers. The question we need to be asking, as responsible marketers, is how we can collect and use information about our customers in a way that genuinely serves our customers’ interests, rather than just our commercial interests, and while ensuring that every step of the way we’re respecting their privacy.

Understanding data sovereignty in marketing

Data sovereignty refers to the concept that data is subject to the laws and governance structures of the jurisdiction where it is collected, stored, and processed – and crucially, who has ultimate control over that data. For marketing professionals, this creates two distinct but related challenges.

Business-level data sovereignty

This is about where your marketing automation platform operates, who controls the infrastructure, and which legal jurisdiction governs your data processing. When you use an EU-hosted SaaS platform, for example, your customer data may be subject to EU laws regardless of where your customers are located. That might be totally fine for you, but problematic if that country’s laws are in conflict with your own values, or that of your customers.

Customer-level data agency

This is about giving your customers meaningful control over their personal information – how it’s collected, used, and shared within your marketing systems. While related to data sovereignty, this is more accurately described as data agency or user empowerment.

The distinction matters, because you can have strong customer privacy practices while still operating in a data sovereignty model that doesn’t serve your business interests – or vice versa. True digital independence requires addressing both levels.

Why this matters for marketing professionals

Consider the practical implications: if you’re using a major cloud-based marketing platform, your customer data may be:

• Subject to foreign government access requests
• Processed in data centres outside your jurisdiction

• Controlled by, and/or accessed by, a third-party company whose interests may not align with yours or your customers’

This is where platforms like Mautic provide genuine advantages – self-hosted, open source solutions give you actual control over both the infrastructure and the data processing.

However, achieving infrastructure sovereignty is only the foundation. Once you have control over where and how your marketing data is processed, the next challenge becomes how you collect and use that data ethically. 

For marketing professionals, this means acknowledging that the data we use to personalize experiences doesn’t belong to us. It belongs to the individuals who generated it, and they have trusted us to take care of that data when it’s in our custody. Our role, therefore, is to be responsible stewards of that data, using it in ways that create genuine value for the people who have entrusted it to us.

With most people experiencing varying degrees of information overload and severely limited attention spans nowadays, we also have to ensure that when we’re asking for consent, the individual is actually able to understand what we’re asking and consent accordingly, instead of clicking whichever button gets the popup out of the way quickest.

This is where the distinction between different types of customer data becomes crucial – and where zero-party and first-party data offer the greatest opportunities for building truly sovereign data relationships, because we are in control of how, when and why we ask for consent and capture information.

Read more about the four types of marketing data in our blog post: Understanding the four types of marketing data: A beginner’s guide.

The challenge of personalization – value vs intrusion

The challenge with personalization involves walking a tightrope, because the more effectively we want to personalize, the more data we typically need to collect and process, yet increased data collection often correlates with decreased user trust and increased privacy concerns.

So, how do we keep our balance as we walk this tightrope?

Four critical questions every marketer should be asking

A simple test you might consider asking yourself before you consider using customer data in your personalization efforts:

• Would a reasonable person expect this use of their data in this context?
  
  • Using purchase history to recommend similar products based on buying behaviour modelling might be acceptable, however inferring health status or specific conditions and then marketing that to the user based on that assumption may feel more intrusive
    
• Is the outcome clearly beneficial to them (not just to us)?
  
  • Showing localized recommendations when a user provides their location which are relevant to the user’s interests can help them to find things they’re interested in, however showing third party revenue-generating advertisements targeted to their geographic region will probably feel more uncomfortable than beneficial to the user
    
• Can they easily opt out, opt down, or change preferences at any time?

  
  • A granular consent preference centre where users can control the kind of information they receive and how their information is used (for example opting out of personalization all together), rather than an ‘all or nothing’ unsubscribe, or a preference centre that only allows you to turn on or off marketing communications without any customization, means the user feels more in control of their digital experience with your brand
    
• Are we collecting the minimum necessary data – and only when it becomes relevant?
  
  • As trust builds, providing users with reasons to share more with you to deliver more useful information and provide a better service is a much more natural way of developing your dataset for a customer, rather than asking for everything upfront ‘on the first date’. Data should also be removed when it’s no longer relevant to retain it.

If the answer to any of these questions is ‘no,’ you’re likely crossing the ethical line, and in many jurisdictions, the legal one too
McKinsey’s research on consumer data protection reveals that personalized advertising and marketing represent significant global value in digital ecosystems (McKinsey, 2020¹), however this value is only sustainable when it’s built on a foundation of trust and genuine user benefit.

Finding your own approach

Sadly there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach when it comes to the level of personalization that will be appropriate, as every customer base and audience will have different levels of tolerance and expectations for both providing the data necessary and receiving a tailored experience based on their data.

In our next post we’ll be sharing some tips on how to create an ethical strategy for using personalisation in your marketing campaigns. In the meantime, leave a comment and share how you’ve got started with personalization and what you’ve found to be the most impactful way of personalization with your customers?

1. McKinsey & Company (2020) ‘Consumer data protection and privacy’, McKinsey, 27 April. Available at: https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/risk-and-resilience/our-insights/the-consumer-data-opportunity-and-the-privacy-imperative (Accessed: 18 August 2025). ︎