General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into effect on 25th May 2018. Whilst many are considering this the “doomsday” of marketing, it is in reality a clear procedure gave that you see how to make your site GDPR consistent.

The intention behind the EU direction is to ensure consumers and consumers against the rising information breaks, which is costing the UK economy billions of pounds a year.

The two key factors of the GDPR regulation are simple: keep customer data secure and make marketing communications as clear as possible.

Email marketing

A key feature of the GDPR regulation is to ensure that customers or emails users do not receive unsolicited emails, whether it is companies they know or do not know. Prior to 25th May, organisations have been encouraged to email their entire list of subscribers and ask them to opt-in again to receive future email newsletters, updates and promotions.

In the event that clients overlook these emails, they will be automatically unsubscribed which has been welcomed by many who are looking to reduce their intake of promotional emails.

Moving forward, website owners must only send out email marketing material to those individual who have officially opted-in and make it easy for people to unsubscribe. Should they disobey and this is reported, they may be prosecuted by the ICO.

Privacy policy

Whilst a privacy policy has always been a key feature of any website’s footer, this is currently obligatory for any dynamic site and ought to incorporate key data about how the site utilizes the client's information. Does your website send enquiries to other companies or partners? This is something you should mention clearly and include the names of partners too.

Handling data

Customers now have a ‘right to be forgotten’ so that they can have their details removed from a website and the database if they request it. Webmasters should therefore have a process in place that caters for this and also facilitate a way that users can request this, whether it mentioning it clearly in their privacy policy or elsewhere on the website.

To emphasize the security of customer data, website owners are required to keep all data secured in an encrypted environment. By adding an https protocol to your website, you are helping encrypt the data that customers fill on your site.

GDPR rules highlight that all data must be stored in the EU. Whilst this can be tricky using operations and software based in the US and overseas, it is important to check that these companies are GDPR compliant whether you are working with GoDaddy, Wordpress, Google, Zoho or Mongodb.