Data protection

The market for business mailing data and email marketing lists changed after May 2018. Marketing departments stepped back from buying cold email and mailing data for fear of tripping up over the new GDPR regulation. But social media, blogs and vlogs do not pull in direct sales in quite the same way as email marketing. Marketing teams selling in to businesses are getting to know GDPR and looking beyond the scary headlines of last summer to discover that for b2b marketing, GDPR does not mean the end of great email marketing campaigns. But there is a check list of key changes to run through

Now that we are all getting used to GDPR, you have probably seen mailing lists advertised with the reassuring words "GDPR Compliant Data". But what does it mean for b2b mailing list data to be GDPR compliant? The mailing list has to be current and up-to-date. The new General Data Protection Regulation does not define 'current'. Electric Marketing is taking the view that our mailing lists, verified by telephone two or three times a year, qualify as being current. If the mailing list contains personal information, and names and company email addresses which contain a person's name do count as

Have You Invested In an eMailing List which is GDPR Compliant? Have you remembered to change your email sign offs and to put links to your privacy policy and legitimate interests assesment in your marketing emails? After the deluge of permissioning emails around GDPR, many people are acutely aware of which emails they have signed up to receive and which requests for permission they denied or ignored. This means that slack marketers can no longer rely on the short memory of a target by writing something like this: "You are receiving this email as you have subscribed in the past to receive

Before the introduction of GDPR in May 2018, many companies emailed everyone on their client and prospect databases with a polite request (with a helping of desperate pleading) for consent from the data subjects to receive marketing emails. But with reported response rates at below 10% and with "consent fatigue" running high well before the deadline, any company which sent an email threatening that the recipient would 'never hear from us again' is now looking at a much diminished marketing database. But businesses marketing to other businesses do not have to rely on consent as a lawful basis

There has been a fair bit of scaremongering (and some unseemly profiteering on the back of scaremongering) surrounding GDPR. If you are looking at files of old email addresses and wondering if you can continue to send business marketing emails, Electric Marketing's data cleansing services can help you tidy up your b2b mailing lists and remove the records that are incorrect. If you are unlucky enough to come to the attention of the ICO, the fact that you have taken steps to comply with the regulation that data must be up-to-date will stand you in good stead. The new regulation is clear that

If you buy business mailing lists and email lists, you can be forgiven for thinking that you can no longer use them since the arrival of GDPR on 25th May 2018, when the new General Data Protection Regulation came into force. Much has been written decrying this Data Protection Regulation update as the end of cold email marketing. And it does herald some big changes, most notably the tightening up of how people consent to their personal data being used. But this does not rule out cold b2b email marketing or using bought-in business mailing lists to generate sales. Since 25th May, for consent to

Now that you've written those GDPR policy documents and tackled your corporate mountain of old data, you might be ready to leave the legal stuff to the lawyers and get back to marketing, comms and sales. But maybe you've read something about PECR and some people on LinkedIn are still insisting that b2b email marketing will be over in May 2018? What Is PECR? PECR is the Privacy & Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 which governs email marketing. As an EU Directive, the UK can choose how to interpret PECR. Crucially the UK allows businesses the freedom to email other

The new GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) rules that if your mailing list is opt-in, consent to opt-in to receive marketing communications must be be "freely-given, specific, informed and unambiguous". It is no longer permitted to use mailing lists on the basis of the old opt-in wheeze of a series of double negatives to leave a box unticked agreeing to be contacted by "the company's marketing partners". The ICO's (Information Commissioners Office) guidance on interpreting GDPR specifically rules out pre-ticked boxes and states that any third party using a mailing list must be named

GDPR sure has been a long time coming. We’ve been worrying about the effects of the new Data Protection legislation from Europe since 2011. We are now a year away from the deadline of 25 May 2018 to comply. And Brexit won’t save us. For consumer marketers there are big changes but for b2b marketing, changes need to be made but they are not too onerous. And if you already comply with current legislation, you will find yourself with a pretty short to-do list for GDPR. Electric Marketing has prepared this guide to GDPR for b2b marketing. It focuses on what is relevant for b2b marketing. The key

On 26 March 2016 the Information Commissioner issued new guidance on Data Protection and Privacy & Electronic Communications Regulations for direct marketing. The full guidance can be read here https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/1555/direct-marketing-guidance.pdf but we've extracted the sections for business-to-business marketing and they are shown below: Business-to-business texts and emails 1. Rules on consent, the soft opt-in and the right to opt out do not apply to electronic marketing messages sent to ‘corporate subscribers’ which means companies and other corporate