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Email marketing campaigns used to be pretty straightforward: you collect contact information, upload it into a third-party tool like Mailchimp or Constant Contact, and send a message to your customers, prospects, or anyone you wanted to spam. Today, the enactment and enforcement of global data privacy laws like Europe’s GDPR and California’s CCPA have significantly restricted the ability for companies to collect and use data generated by individuals. Perhaps the greatest effect has been to restrict email marketing practices, which now must consider the concept of consent as outlined in each of these laws.
If you use email campaigns as part of your overall marketing strategy, you should get familiar with various data privacy laws that apply to your business; failing to do so could result in significant financial penalties and damage to your brand reputation.
What is a Data Privacy Law?
Data privacy laws are legislation that have been enacted by governments around the world with the intent of protecting individual rights regarding data privacy and security. These individuals can be your customers, employees, vendors or someone as casual as a visitor to your website. These laws generally outline rules regarding how organizations can collect and use individuals’ personal data (e.g. name, address, phone number, email address and IP address, among others), and what these organization must communicate to individuals regarding collection and use. Almost every aspect of online engagement, including email marketing, is covered by these data privacy laws, with the two most frequently discussed being GDPR and CCPA.
What is Email Marketing?
Email marketing can be a cost-effective way to stay engaged with an audience that has expressed interest in your product or service by signing up for a newsletter or some other type of communication. Running a compliant email marketing campaign isn’t particularly difficult, but it requires that businesses avoid making some crucial mistakes.
Sending an email to someone might not seem like a violation of data privacy, but it could be if it is not done properly. Understanding the rules regarding the collection of email addresses, and providing recipients a way to unsubscribe from your email marketing list are crucial to not running afoul of data privacy laws.
How Does GDPR Affect Email Marketing?
GDPR is what is called an explicit consent or “opt-in” jurisdiction; meaning that companies must obtain the consent of anyone prior to contacting them via email. This can be accomplished by having a European individual click an “I Accept” button strictly for email communication on your site, however you cannot assume these website visitors have provided consent just by virtue of visiting your site or even by purchasing a product or service from you. Additionally, GDPR requires that companies demonstrate how consent was obtained and whether any consenting users have since opted out or unsubscribed from newsletters or other email marketing communications. Also, companies must provide individuals to delete, request and access the personal data collected by that company, among other rights.
How Does CCPA Affect Email Marketing?
CCPA is what is called an implied consent or “opt-out” jurisdiction; meaning that companies can assume the consent of anyone prior to contacting them via email, but must provide that individual a mechanism to opt-out of or unsubscribing from receiving emails. Additionally, data regarding the open rate and click-through rate of each individual user is considered personal information; if a user requests their data be removed, you must not only delete their email address from your list but also any data gleaned from their engagement with your email marketing campaign as well.
How Can I Make My Email Marketing Campaigns Compliant?
Data privacy laws are complex, and impossible to fully cover in a blog post, but we’re including five helpful tips on how you can avoid running afoul of consumer data privacy laws:
- Collect contact information properly…
