GDPR is coming…is your mailing list ready?

Daneswood GDPR Readiness – £150 + VAT

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is less than 50 days away and is set to be the most important change to Data Privacy in over 20 years, incurring fines of up to €20 million for those who fail to be compliant. Unfortunately, we can’t wave a magic wand and make you compliant with the new regulations but we can help you with some of the tasks you need to undertake.

So, what should you do?

It all depends on whether you capture personal details through your website and then use that information to market to those people. If you do, then there are two options available to you –

• you can  take the Wetherspoon’s approach and delete years of valuable data just to be on the safe side
• or you can get all your customers whose emails you have captured to ‘opt in’ to hearing from you via a new ‘Permissions Campaign’.

You also need to ensure your online ‘sign-up form’ to collect personal information (including email addresses) on your website has a positive opt in as well as making sure that your Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy are up to date. Although we can’t provide the legal advice you need to make your policies GDPR compliant, we can help you to keep on the right side of the law when it comes to your mailing lists.

Will my email subscription list be smaller?

The short answer to this one is yes, but there is good news! Your new list will have:

• Quality contacts (it’s not about quantity)
• Much higher open rates
• Higher conversions
• Lower costs
• A personalised audience who are genuinely interested in what you’re selling

Let Daneswood do the hard work

This is where we come in – for a flat rate of just £150 + VAT we will:

• Create a MailChimp e-shot design with your branding and write the ‘opt-in permission’ text for it
• Send 3 permission e-shots to your mailing list in MailChimp, staggered over time to ensure maximum effectiveness
• Create a ‘hidden opt-in form/page’ on your website that records who has re-subscribed
• Ensure anyone who ‘opts in’ is captured efficiently for future mailing and all those who don’t are excluded, leaving you with a ‘cleaned list’ to use

If you use another email marketing system that isn’t Mailchimp – or you simply have a list of email addresses sitting there gathering dust – we can still help you, so please call us to discuss.

What about my website?

You will also need to look to update your email subscription box on your website, if you have one. We can do this separately for £75 + VAT and ensure the signup box has a link to your new Privacy Policy and has a clear and mandatory ‘opt-in’ tick box too. This cost will depend on the website platform that you have, but it’s still a simple and affordable amendment.

What you need to do

You will need to revise your Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy, although we can input the paragraph about which cookies are used on your site as that’s a technical bit. The Privacy Policy needs to state what you do with the data you collect, where it’s stored on your CRM, for how long etc. We advise all our clients to ask their solicitor to put this revised policy together, as it needs to be legally correct. You can then send us the revised policies, so we can drop in the bit about cookies and upload the new policies to the site. We work with Stephens Scown solicitors and can arrange for a fixed price package to help with GDPR. Stephens Scown are experts in this area and we can put you in touch with the right people if you contact us.

So, ensure that your mailing lists are GDPR ready and ask Daneswood to help you get one step closer to following compliance guidelines and avoid a fine.

Be GDPR safe, not sorry

Contact Luke today to discuss your GDPR readiness needs on 01392 248 365 or luke@daneswood.co.uk