The Basics
The “General Data Protection Regulation” (GDPR) is a new set of guidelines that come with a lot of new rules and requirements governing how businesses must handle consumers’ personal data. Most significantly, the GDPR introduces the concept of “legitimate interest.” Essentially, when it comes to the processing of personal data, businesses must have a business reason for doing so instead of just following the default approach of gathering as much data as possible to improve their bottom line.
What Is Legitimate Interest?
According to the GDPR, businesses have a responsibility to use personal data in a way that fulfils the purposes for which the data were collected. Now that purposeful collection of personal data is a GDPR requirement, marketers must be cognizant of how they can leverage this data to create marketing ROI.
In the past, businesses were able to collect personal data in bulk and use it for any purpose they saw fit. The GDPR introduces a new concept called “legitimate interest,” which gives businesses more responsibility in how they handle customers’ personal data. With the GDPR, collecting data for marketing purposes is no longer sufficient; businesses must now have a legitimate interest in doing so.
To determine whether or not their interest is legitimate, businesses must answer the following question:
- What is the purpose of the processing?
- Does the processing serve that purpose?
- Is the processing necessary for the purpose?
- Is the processing fair?
- Does the processing comply with the data subject’s right to privacy?
- Does the data subject have the right to objection?
If you’re wondering what the purpose of the processing is, you should ask yourself this question:
- Does the processing help me do my job better?
- Does it help me provide a better service to my customers?
- Does it allow me to grow my business?
How Does This Affect Email Marketing?
Let’s say you run a blog and you decide to use email marketing to grow your audience. Your email marketing provider offers you a program to quickly and easily segment your audience by referring them to either of your blog’s social media accounts. You decide to use this tool, but before you opt-in your email audience, you have to ask yourself:
- What is the purpose of the processing?
- Does the processing help me do my job better?
- Does it help me provide a better service to my customers?
- Does it allow me to grow my business?
The answer to the first question – what is the purpose of the processing – is pretty self-explanatory. Your blog’s social media accounts are used to promote your website. The answer to the second question is a bit more subtle. When you opt-in your email marketing audience, you’re allowing your email provider to send you promotional emails about products and services.
A third question you need to ask yourself is: Does the processing of my personal data meet the requirements of my data protection rights? Here, you need to make sure that the information processed is relevant to your needs, is not unnecessarily processed, and is protected from unauthorised access.
For instance, if you’re an eCommerce business and you’re processing personal data so you can send your customers newsletters about new products, you need to make sure that these emails are relevant to them. You also need to ensure that your customers can unsubscribe from these emails at any time. Otherwise, you could be in breach of data protection law
Opting In And Out Of Email Marketing
As with any other form of marketing, your email marketing participants will want to keep hearing from you. To ensure continued high engagement, you must continually update your audience about new products, special offers, and anything else that you think may be of interest to them. One way of doing this is through email marketing.
If you want to continue receiving promotional emails from a business you’ve previously opted-in to, you need to opt-in again. Otherwise, you might find yourself on the receiving end of a legal letter from a data protection authority.
If you want to stop receiving promotional emails from a business you’ve previously opted-in to, you need to opt-out. You can do this by emailing the business and requesting that they remove you from their email list. Alternatively, you can unsubscribe using the unsubscribe link at the bottom of every email you receive from the business.
In order to ensure you’re acting within the laws governing data protection, it’s essential that you’re familiar with the GDPR. Not only does it set the bar high in terms of data privacy and security, but it also requires businesses to ask themselves a host of questions regarding the manner in which they handle personal data. With the GDPR, even seemingly simple tasks such as email marketing can become slightly more complicated. However, if you’re determined to grow your email engagement, then the rewards can be invaluable.