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Some thoughts on GDPR and mailing lists
May. 24th, 2018 10:09 amAmong the big strategic questions posed by data protection regulations are why do I hold people's data and what do I use it for? Having a mailing list so you can update folk on new products is perfectly legitimate, but what's exercising mailing list owners is being able to show an audit trail of consent. So, if your list shows that x opted in via a sign up form on date y then all is well. The issue lies where you haven't that clear evidence.
We've all been getting e-mails recently asking us to keep in touch and I'm sure we've often thought, "I didn't want to be in touch with you in the first place! How did you get my contact details?" We might be on that list because we ticked - or failed to tick - a box about sharing data with partner companies. Maybe our data was sold. Maybe it was imported from another source. Maybe it's something else.
To use a real example, the UK Meet newsletter list was originally populated with e-mail addresses of those who attended the previous two meets. We explained this at the time and have always given the option to unsubscribe, but the reality is that for the initial batch we have no evidence that they have consciously opted in. They're the ones we're contacting again and they're the ones who might have to be mothballed in the weeks ahead. We can always encourage them to resubscribe, but the reality is that we're all on lots of lists, and maybe this is an opportunity to decide - as the "mailee" - what lists we really want to remain on.
We've all been getting e-mails recently asking us to keep in touch and I'm sure we've often thought, "I didn't want to be in touch with you in the first place! How did you get my contact details?" We might be on that list because we ticked - or failed to tick - a box about sharing data with partner companies. Maybe our data was sold. Maybe it was imported from another source. Maybe it's something else.
To use a real example, the UK Meet newsletter list was originally populated with e-mail addresses of those who attended the previous two meets. We explained this at the time and have always given the option to unsubscribe, but the reality is that for the initial batch we have no evidence that they have consciously opted in. They're the ones we're contacting again and they're the ones who might have to be mothballed in the weeks ahead. We can always encourage them to resubscribe, but the reality is that we're all on lots of lists, and maybe this is an opportunity to decide - as the "mailee" - what lists we really want to remain on.
