Email users are known to send an average of 122 emails at work every day, and the quantity is likely to grow. Your inbox contains a wealth of personal data like names, email addresses, attachments, and conversations. Thus, you can be trapped in the strict new data protection requirements of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Any organization, company, or even charity handling the private records of EU residents or citizens is concerned with the GDPR. This consists of agencies that no longer function inside the European Union but provide goods and services.
Those who don’t observe the policies can receive a penalty of €20 million or four percent of world revenue, among other fines. Therefore, companies need to be careful when they send mass emails.
This article will cover five factors that you should know regarding email consent.
1. Consent From Positive Opt-In, Not From Pre-Ticked Boxed
Under GDPR, email consent is only validated if consumers willingly confirm their consent through ticking an opt-in box. A pre-checked box that uses customer inactivity to presume consent is invalid under GDPR.
2. Separate Consent Request From Other Terms And Conditions
Clients must give email consent freely — it gives people a choice to truly decide if they want to subscribe to a website’s marketing messages. For example: if it’s mandatory to subscribe to a newsletter and it is mandatory to access a whitepaper, the consent isn’t freely given.
For an email consent to be valid for GDPR, it must be implicated separately. Incorporating consent with terms and conditions, any services, or privacy notices isn’t right.
3. Provide An Easy Process And Guide On How To Withdraw Consent
The consent request should be prominent, concise, easy to understand, and separate from other information such as terms of use. Most email regulations in major countries, including CASL in Canada and CANSPAM in the United States, necessitate brands to allow subscribers to opt-out of receiving emails.
The promotional emails you send should include the unsubscribe option. If you’re already complying with present European, Canadian, or US email laws, then you might not need to change this GDPR compliance requirement. Moreover, this is an excellent opportunity to review your existing opt-out method and make sure you follow deregistration best practices:
- Don’t charge fees
- Don’t ask for any other info beyond their email address
- Don’t necessitate logins for subscribers
- Don’t request any subscriber to click more pages than one to submit requests
4. Collect Consented Evidence — Who, When, and How
According to Article 7 of the GDPR, consent is the appropriate legal basis for data processing only if it is freely given, concrete, informed and reflects the data subject’s will. It should be free from pressures or influences that could affect choices.
The data subject should also be able to revoke consent without suffering any consequences. In addition, individual permission must be obtained for personal data processing. The GDPR also needs to allow data managers to exhibit that data subjects agreed to a processing operation based on the data subject’s consent.
- Who and when they consented
- What were they told at the time of consent
- How were they consent (e.g., through Facebook form, newsletter, or at checkout)
- Have they withdrawn consent? If yes, then when
5. Revise Your Consent Practices And Current Opt-Ins
Holding a comprehensive agreement is generally essential for data protection compliance but is explicitly required under the GDPR. These records must include, among other things, how to identify the user, proof of consent, a history of consent, and if legal documents are made available to the user when permission is given.
If your current subscribers have consented according to GDPR laws, and you have recorded those instances, you are in the clear. However, if your present records do not comply with GDPR requirements, you will need to audit your current email list and implement a re-permission program.
Final Thoughts
For email marketing in the EU, one must comply with data protection laws set by GDPR. This includes sending repetitive campaigns to get the explicit consent of EU subscribers, notifying recipients about how customer data is processed, and adding unsubscribe links to marketing emails.
By implementing the above best practices, you will not have any problems implementing GDPR-compliant email marketing in the future.
