If your company targets the European market, GDPR in Email Marketing you’d better be GDPR compliant. Otherwise, you’re likely breaking the law.
Failing to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) results in charges, fines, and a damaged brand reputation. And given how easy it is to stay GDPR compliant, there’s no reason you shouldn’t follow the regulations.
In this article, we cover everything you need to know about GDPR email marketing to help you write GDPR-friendly emails and avoid fines.
What Is GDPR?
GDPR is a set of security and privacy laws in the European Union (EU) that regulate how data should be collected and processed.
How does it help? The GDPR protects individuals from:
Unnecessary data collection
Wrongful use of personal data
Personal data breach
Biased algorithmic decision making
The data protection rules increase croatia mobile phone numbers database transparency and accountability between businesses and their customers, giving users a better understanding of what their personal data is used for.
Since 2018, all organizations with EU-based audiences must follow the regulations.
What’s considered “personal data”?
Every piece of information that relates to an identifiable person is personal data. It might be:
Person’s name
Location data
IP address
Cookie identifier
Username
Sensitive personal data, like local marketing: what is it and how to implement it online? racial or ethnic origin, political beliefs, health life, etc.
Does GDPR affect you?
The GDPR requirements apply to every company that targets or collects data related to people in the EU.
“If my company isn’t EU-based, does the GDPR affect me?”
Yes, it does. Since the GDPR rules aim to protect individuals in the EU, it doesn’t matter where you are located as long as you process the personal data of EU citizens or residents.
GDPR and email marketing
How does the GDPR affect your email marketing strategy?
Since you need to collect users’ contact information to reach them with marketing messages, your email marketing campaigns fall under the GDPR. This means you should follow the key GDPR principles when gathering, processing, and storing user data. (Even if it’s only an email address!)
Contrary to what some marketers expected, the GDPR didn’t kill email marketing. Quite the opposite, GDPR-compliant brands have a chance to strengthen their relationships with their audience, build trust, and improve email engagement.
Email marketing has become less disruptive and more relevant and trustworthy. Now, companies think twice before sending a promotional email, and customers no longer see marketing communications as irrelevant and intrusive.
7 GDPR principles you should follow
Here are seven data protection principles every email marketer should know.
Lawfulness, fairness, and transparency
When collecting personal data, you should align with three sub-principles of the GDPR:
Lawfulness: You have a good reason to gather the data.
Fairness: You don’t withhold information about the reasons behind collecting the data.
Transparency: You’re open with data conduit china subjects about what your company does and why you need the data.
Users should know where their data goes and how it’s processed. You should add this information right within your data collection form.
Purpose limitation
There should be a “specified, explicit, and legitimate purpose” behind data collection. For instance, if you state you need the user’s email address to send transactional emails, you aren’t allowed to reach them with marketing communications.
The principle of purpose limitation protects individuals from wrongful use of data, spam, and irrelevant communications.
Data minimization
GDPR strives to minimize the collection of excessive data. To comply with this principle, an organization can only ask for the data they need to achieve the stated purpose.
This rule makes it easier for companies to manage data and keep it up-to-date. It also minimizes the damage caused by a potential data breach.
Accuracy
A business must also take responsibility for updating the data and erasing incorrect information whenever they spot it. Individuals have the right to request the removal of irrelevant or incomplete information within 30 days.
For instance, when a user opts out of your marketing communications, the principle of data accuracy requires you to remove their email address from your marketing email list.
Storage limitation
The data collected should be stored only for a specified timeline. If you no longer need the data to achieve the goal you previously established, you must delete it from your database.
You can also archive the data, but you need to indicate the retention period and detail reasons for doing so in your privacy policy.
Integrity and confidentiality
According to the official legal text of EU GDPR, this principle helps to ensure that the data is
You must adopt proper measures to secure your audience data from deliberate attacks or accidental breaches. For email marketers, this means:
Choosing a reliable email marketing service provider that follows email authorization standards
Collecting necessary data only
Using email encryption (your email marketing platform should do this for you)
Allowing access to customer data only to employees who need it
Accountability
The seventh principle requires you to collect all the necessary documentation that may prove that you meet compliance regulations. This documentation may include:
Proof that you have obtained user consent before collecting the data
Purpose of data processing
Explanation of how the data has been used
Data retention policy
Information on security measures implemented
Maintaining records of data processing activities allows you to demonstrate your compliance with GDPR, saving you a lot of trouble.
GDPR fines: What happens if you don’t comply
There’s one significant reason to stay GDPR compliant — large fines for non-compliance.
Under the GDPR, fines can reach €20 million or 4% of the company’s global turnover for the preceding financial year. The fines are flexible and depend on the severity of the infringement which is determined by the nature, gravity, and duration of the GDPR violation.
The biggest ever fine was registered in July 2021. Amazon was again found incompliant with general data processing principles and had to pay a penalty of €746 million. It’s followed by Meta (€405 million), WhatsApp Ireland (€225 million), and Google (€90 million).