For email marketers, GDPR could genuinely mean that less is more and small is beautiful.
So, here we are. The week after the week before. GDPR finally came into effect on May 25th.
It became clear in the weeks leading up to it that many companies were still not sure what they needed to do to be compliant. Inboxes across Europe and beyond were inundated with emails outlining privacy policies or seeking re-permissions from subscribers to email newsletters. Some were measured and considered, some appeared to have been written in a state of frenzy and some need not have been sent at all.
There is no requirement within GDPR for companies to renew consents from subscribers to email newsletters as long as the manner in which those consents were initially required met GDPR standards. This was the case for many companies, however, faced with uncertainty, some did seek to renew consents although they didn’t need to do so.
In some cases, they will have seen their email newsletter contact list reduce in size as a result. The good news is that that need not be bad news, indeed, the result may be more silver lining than cloud. In recent weeks, pretty much everybody with an email address has been given an opportunity to spring clean: they have eliminated email newsletters that they were no longer interested in and kept those they found compelling.
In this context, small could really turn out to be beautiful as your marketing becomes more targeted, more focused and, critically, more welcome – after all, the contacts on your post-GDPR list are yours because they want to be. You can email them secure in the knowledge that they want to hear from you. This should allow your marketing voice to grow in confidence and become more authoritative, and, with the right content, it should lead to a higher click rate and richer engagement.
The avalanche of often unnecessary emails in the run up to May 25th may have seemed a nuisance but it was illustrative of how GDPR will ultimately improve things as companies will increasingly engage with committed subscribers who have taken back control of the information they receive.
And, of course, whether you have lost subscribers or simply want to reach new prospects, there are always ways of building your list. Some simple steps to do this include having a clear call to action on your website to encourage visitors to subscribe to your newsletter and promoting it vigorously through social media channels. It is also a good idea to have some archive copies of your newsletter available on your website.
As the deadline for GDPR compliance approached, many people felt intimidated by it but one way or another, we now live in the era of GDPR: if you have yet to do anything about it, your first concern should be to check your activities against GDPR compliance and desist from any activity that does not comply until you have introduced the necessary measures.
There is no need to panic but do remember that GDPR should only be a problem if you ignore it.
Our FAQs on GDPR compliance and email marketing should help you with the process: https://group-mail.com/email-marketing/gdpr-email-marketing-faq/