Toby Walker, managing director of Workshop Marketing, on why in the rush to get GDPR-ready, many people are overlooking another key piece of email marketing legislation
With only days to go before the new data protection law comes into full effect, the number of requests I receive asking me to reconsent to marketing emails or agree to a new set of T&Cs is ramping up sharply.
The fact that this flurry of activity is happening so very close to the 25th May deadline serves as a clear indicator of just how confusing GDPR is for our industry and arguably how poorly the issue has been handled by the EU, UK Government and the ICO.
The first time I heard of the GDPR was back in November 2016 and since then, either I, or one of my colleagues, has attended every workshop, training session or talk about the subject that we could get a seat at.
What an eye opener that turned out to be… while every session added something to our collective knowledge, most of them also managed to introduce outlandish sounding ideas that warranted further investigation.
The kind of GDPR ‘must-do actions’ being put forward ranged from no longer being able to use the CC function on emails, to the assertion that all marketing communications will require consent.
Or that double opt-in for email marketing is part of the new law and that you need to record every single point of communication with every single person who contacts your business in whatever capacity.
