GDPR – What we’ve done to become compliant

May 25^th will see a change in the way we hold personal information and market to our contacts. Hopefully by now you’ve all heard of the new General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). Following our research this is what we did to make ourselves GDPR compliant.

1. Privacy Policy – We’ve updated our privacy policy to ensure we give accurate information in a simple and clear language. We tell our visitors how we collect, secure and handle our data. We tell our visitors what information we collect and what we use this information for. We advise our visitors how they can remove their data held by us and how they can make contact with any data request.

ACTION: Our privacy policy is available on our website, located in the footer along with other important and required information.

2. Forms – We’ve changed to an opt-in strategy with the type of marketing that will be broadcasted stated in a simple and clear language. All our contact forms end with a check box that you can select to opt-in to receive our email marketing. As well as this, there were several elements needed to be thought through – What plugin currently provides the forms, where will the subscriber information be stored, will there be time and date stamps, how do we get subscribers into a list ready for marketing?

ACTION: As part of GDPR you need to be able to show where someone has opted in and have a time/date stamp for each person. We used forms provided via our Hubspot CRM software to pass the data directly into our subscriber list with the date and time stamps recorded. This means our subscribers are all ready for their first communication!

3. Email Marketing – Before you send your marketing it is vital to understand what data you hold and whether you can use it. The first step we took was preparing an excel document with a list of all our contacts. We then divided that list up into categories, our categories are based on our relationship with that contact. A client, a service provider, a prospect client, newsletter signups and family & friends. We then added a column to mark whether we have permission to market to them or not.

ACTION: As part of being GDPR compliant you are only allowed to contact people who have provided an opt in to your marketing. As such we decided to complete a series of three-email reconfirmation email campaigns – The goal to drive as many people to reconfirm so that we have their permission to send them email communications. These were very successful reconfirming a large percentage of our contacts.

Remember: You need to keep your data cleansed. Do not add anyone who’s not given an opt in and cleanse your data. Remove anyone who’s not engaged with your marketing.

On a plus side, you want to market to those who are interested in what you have to offer and will be more likely to convert into business. GDPR takes care of those less interested and helps you focus on those who are.

You will find that this process could completely decimate your marketing lists. We’ve thought about other ways to help build them back up, in a GDPR compliant way!

1. Add a signup to marketing box on your website.
2. Add a link to signup in your email signature.
3. Add a marketing checkbox to contacts for new clients coming on board to decide if they wish to opt in or not.

Can we help you become GDPR compliant?

If you need help updating your website, adding content, updating forms or with a reconfirmation email campaign we’d be happy to help. But don’t put it off the 25th of May is just around the corner!