The European Union’s strategy for online privacy sets new standard requirements for compliance i communications between email marketing firms and their subscribers.
The new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) laws, to become active on May 25 2018, brings wide-reaching changes that will make entities accountable for their actions while empowering and safeguarding the users. This law also looks set to control the menace of data exploitation for marketing reasons.
The current laws fail to incorporate considerations for advanced web technology, smartphones or social media. With GDPR, firms will have review their consent mechanisms to make them specific, explicit, granular, prominent and help easy withdrawal.
As per the existing regulations, email marketers are cal only legally send emails to their previous clients or those that opted in to receive such emails at the time they were signing up to the firm’s mailing list. These provisions are still in line with GDPR. Also, companies are not allowed to email consumers who had not authorized electronic communications with the aim of asking them to opt in to emails. The law deals with such emails as spam which could lead to serious fines.
GDPR requires brands to seek consent separately from other terms and conditions agreed. This would give subscribers the chance to understand what they are signing up to. Alongside this, marketers will be obliged to ensure that users can view their personal data at any time with options to withdraw their consent or the use of their information.
Pre-ticked opt-in boxes will, in future, no longer be dealt with as a valid form of consent. The new legislation allows email marketers to only broadcast emails to customers who clearly chose to opt in for electronic communications. Opt-out methods of communication will not be permitted under GDPR because they are similar to pre-ticked opt-in options.
If the email marketers have to employ the use of personal data for separate means, they will be obliged to seek consent separately for each single reason they want to use the consumers’ data. This provision tries to ensure that users have as much control over the use of their personal data as possible. The marketers will have to inform the users what the organization is about and names of third parties who the organization would share the information and details with.