Consent, GDPR and email marketing
Contents
Simple rules for email marketing consent
Offering a freebie isn’t a green light to put people on your list
How to make sure your emails are GDPR compliant
Won’t this mean I’ll have a smaller email list?
Serial stranger to consent, Donald Trump, has been at it again lately. But his most recent TWOC* involves music rather than allegedly grabbing women by the pussy.
At a recent Trump campaign event in Arizona, Foo Fighters’ track My Hero blasted out as John F Kennedy Junior walked on stage.
In response, the band’s spokesperson stated: “Foo Fighters were not asked permission, and if they were, they would not have granted it.” A report by Sky News indicates this is a regular occurrence in Trump Land.
It seems there’s a long line of artists who have spoken out against him using their music without consent.
What is it with this man and consent? When is he going to understand that you can’t just take (or touch) other people’s stuff without permission? At this point we’ve got to conclude that he simply doesn’t understand the concept of consent in any context. Either that, or he just doesn’t care.
And sadly it isn’t just him. Even though we’ve come a long way in recent years in our understanding of consent, it seems we’ve still got a way to go.
Don’t even get me started on the absurd ‘consent videos’ that some men seemed to think were an appropriate response to the #MeToo movement. That’s a discussion for another time.
*Taking without consent
Simple rules for email marketing consent
Now, I know email marketing isn’t in any way the same thing as using another person’s intellectual property without consent, or indeed, any type of physical assault.
But I think if we can get our heads around consent in those areas, we can surely apply that to other parts of our lives.
It’s as simple as:
Don’t take anything without permission, music, property, data.
If it’s not an enthusiastic yes, then it’s a no.
You must give people opportunities to change their minds.
When they change their minds, you need to respect that.
If they’ve said yes to one kind of contact once, it doesn’t give you the green light to all sorts of other kinds of contact, whenever you feel like it.
If they’ve said yes once, it doesn’t mean they’ll always say yes.
You shouldn’t trick people into saying yes by misleading them.
You can apply these simple rules to all areas of both your personal and professional life. Put simply, don’t be a pestering dick who won’t take no for an answer.
In email marketing:
❌ Don’t automatically add your business contacts as subscribers to your newsletter or marketing emails.
❌ Don’t assume you can send marketing emails to people just because they’ve bought from you in the past.
✅ Make sure you get explicit consent. And that has to be an opt-in rather than them having to opt out.
✅ Offer your newsletter subscribers a way to opt out of sales emails for particular promotions.
❌ Don’t hold people to ransom with a freebie. If you’re offering a free download, webinar, or podcast series make sure it really is free. Don’t make signing up to regular emails a condition of getting the freebie.
GDPR and consent
GDPR (the General Data Protection Regulation) is an EU privacy law that came into effect in 2018. It states that when you’re processing people’s data for email marketing, you must get consent.
It means that if you want to add people to your email list, you need consent that’s:
Freely given
Specific
Informed
Unambiguous
It has to be all these things to satisfy the standard.
What if I’m not in the EU?
Now, technically the UK is no longer part of the EU, thanks to Brexit. But the UK has adopted its own version (UK GDPR). It means the key principles remain the same. So if you’re in the UK, you still need to comply.
It’s also worth noting that GDPR applies if either the marketer or the person whose data is collected is in the EU. So, GDPR can still affect marketers based in other parts of the world if they do business with people based in the EU.
In the USA and Canada, for example, the rules for data processing and email consent are much more relaxed. So there aren’t as many hoops to jump through to make sure your email sign-up forms are compliant. But, if those based in the USA and Canada could have potential sign-ups from the EU, they’ll also need to comply with GDPR.
It’s also good practice anyway. Even if you don’t need to get consent in your location, why wouldn’t you? Unsolicited and pestering emails are annoying and intrusive. Surely you only want people on your email list who want to be there, right?
Beware of the double opt-in
I’ve been alarmed lately to find that a lot of people think that having a double opt-in covers them for GDPR.
In fact, a lot of double opt-ins aren’t compliant. And you don’t need them. You can have perfectly compliant single opt-ins.
Offering a freebie isn’t a green light to put people on your list
Often, businesses will offer a freebie - a downloadable checklist, a free webinar, a private podcast feed, a white paper - to get people on their email list.
While it’s a good list building strategy, you cannot require consent in order for people to download the freebie. Because then it’s not freely given. It’s also not a specific or unambiguous indication that they want to get future marketing emails from you.
How to make sure your emails are GDPR compliant
If you offer a freebie or lead magnet, you have to give them that freebie no matter what. Then, you can sell them on the benefits of joining your email list.
Freebie downloads as lead magnets
On your sign-up form for your freebie, you must have an optional checkbox to also sign up for your marketing emails. And if they don’t check that box, you can’t add them to your list.
But you also can’t have the checkbox as a condition to download the freebie.
If they want the freebie and don’t check the consent box for future emails, you can deliver them that freebie and a couple of emails directly related to it. But nothing else.
Newsletter sign-up forms
Sometimes, businesses have sign-up forms on their websites which don’t offer freebies. In that case, you don’t need an extra consent box because the call to action is ‘sign up for my newsletter.’ If people fill those forms in, consent is freely given, specific and unambiguous.
As a rule, any sign-up form where the call to action isn’t ‘sign up for my newsletter’ or ‘sign up for emails’ will need an extra, optional consent checkbox.
You must display a privacy policy
By law, you have to provide certain information when you’re collecting data. In the case of email marketing, you must include a link to your privacy policy in the same place you’re collecting the information.
In the case of a static or in-line sign-up form on your website, you could have a link to your privacy policy in the footer of that page.
When the sign-up form is a pop up, you should have a clear, clickable link to your privacy policy on the form.
Offer a way to unsubscribe
You also must have a clear and easy way to unsubscribe. Which is why you should use an email marketing platform for your email marketing. And not just send them from your regular email account.
All the email marketing platforms have an unsubscribe link in their footers. It makes complying with this particular rule really easy.
Won’t this mean I’ll have a smaller email list?
In truth, probably. Your email list might be smaller as a result of having GDPR compliant sign-up forms.
But it’s the law. So you have to do it.
Plus, you’ll know your subscribers actually want to be there and haven’t been hoodwinked into signing up. It makes for much more engaged readers and warmer leads.
If you’re based in the USA, Canada or somewhere else with less strict rules, you could use tools like Kartra or OptinMonster to geo-locate users. That way you can show different sign-up forms to those in the EU.
But honestly? Even if you don’t need to ask for consent, you probably should anyway. It’s just good practice to operate using consent based marketing, wherever you’re based. Much less dickish.
When I talk about consent based marketing I have to mention Tarzan Kay. I’ve learnt a lot of what I know about this subject from taking her Email Stars course. Highly recommended. She’s also got a great newsletter (affiliate link).
If you’re looking for help with building a consent based email marketing strategy that brings you highly engaged subscribers, give me a shout. You can book a free call with me here, or drop me an email at natalie@elvinwrites.com
