Hi @chrishechler,
Thank you for your interest in Real Cookie Banner. We must point out that the following statements do not constitute legal advice. Therefore, I can only give you evaluations from our intensive experience with the EU legal regulations in practice and a technical assessment of the situation.
With Real Cookie Banner you can obtain consent for the setting/reading of cookies in accordance with the ePrivacy Directive and for the processing of personal data in accordance with the GDPR. The services created in Real Cookie Banner not only inform the website visitor about the services, but only integrate them on your website after consent has been given. If a service is already necessarily integrated into your website (e.g. a YouTube video in an article), Content Blockers in Real Cookie Banner ensure that the loading of the element and the resulting data processing is blocked until consent is obtained. In addition, replacement content is displayed that asks for consent if the website visitor in the cookie banner has decided not to consent to YouTube, for example. This allows them to give their consent at a later point in time and then watch the video.
However, a cookie banner should not be used to obtain consent for newsletters in accordance with the legal provisions of Art. 7 (2) GDPR. According to the legal requirement, a clear distinction must be made between the circumstances in which consent is given. Consent to email marketing (and the collection of the email address in the cookie banner) is far removed from the active decision of the website visitor to subscribe to a newsletter for email marketing. You should therefore include a consent and unsubscribe process for email marketing in your newsletter tool. Most modern e-mail newsletter tools already have standard processes for this.
Best regards,
Jan