On May 25th, 2018, the European Union’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) will come into effect, and email marketing companies need to adhere to the regulation to avoid troubles in the future. Email marketers have less than a week left to overhaul their usage practice and adhere to the new rules set by the European Union. Due to lack of confusion and incomplete knowledge, your marketing campaign might suffer to no extent. And, if your email includes a single subscriber from the EU, you should comply to the GDPR to avoid the severe repercussions for violating the law. Focus on hiring a competitive e newsletter service who can guide to the latest email consent under the new GDPR. Here are a few things every email marketer must know.
1. Verify the email opt-in tactics
Relying on pre-checked opt-in will become history with the new GDPR law. A subscriber has to show consent by ticking an unchecked box in the opt-in form. In other words, the audience should provide an unambiguous consent to receive email newsletters from your brand. Additionally, you need to explicitly tell your audience what they can expect from your email communication, and the email capture widget which your e newsletter service is using should indicate the consent of the customer. The rule is likely to help customers who fall into the trap of unsolicited brands while visiting a website.
2. Renew email consent from all EU subscribers
As per GDPR, your brand needs to keep a record of the date at which a customer agreed to receive email communication from your brand. And, if you lack the record, you need to get approval from the EU subscribers all over again. Use list segmentation to find out the EU subscribers and send a new opt-in form seeking their explicit consent to keep on receiving messages from your brand. Also, don’t make the mistake of clubbing terms & condition with the opt-in form.
3. Ease out the unsubscribe process
A majority of the email laws like CAN-SPAM requires a marketer to allow the customer to leave the email campaign without any difficulty. Therefore, all your promotional emails should be accompanied with an unsubscribe option for the readers. To follow the GDPR guidelines, you can direct the unsubscribes to an email preference center. This way you stay compliant with the instructions and retain crucial customers by eliminating the cause of leaving the marketing campaign.
4. Keep an eye on the consent practices
GDPR comes into effect from May 25th, 2018 will apply to previous EU customers in your marketing list. The best way to keep a hawk eye on the consent practices is to audit the existing marketing list. It will ensure that all such members have agreed to receive information as per the latest guidelines from the EU. Remove customers who fail to reply to the re-engagement programs as you will end up violating the set law. Hire an e newsletter service to walk you through the new laws of email consent.
