In May 2018 the famous GDPR, the General Data Protection Regulation, will enter into force. What this new law tries to steer is, basically, to strengthen the protection of Internet user’s personal data. Many articles have already discussed this issue, and they predict this regulation is going to greatly affect email marketing professionals and its users.

To help us all understand better the changes and challenges the GDPR will imply in the email marketing field, we have created the following infographic. But first, let’s have a deeper conversation about the issue.

Mailing and GDPR: what will change

The infographic will focus, in particular, on previous authorisation, one of this new regulation’s crucial points. To show the consequences, it emphasizes a precise aspect of the GDPR, the consent, and draws the attention to two of its most concrete applications when talking about sendings containing business information: account creation and newsletter subscriptions, two lead generation spotlights used by many companies and which will be regulated by the GDPR.

Following these examples, we’ll show you what will you be able to do and what not after the implementation of the GDPR, and what alternatives do you have. We already know, for example, that it won’t be possible to check a box authorizing the company to send commercial campaigns to those users who create an account.

Moreover, it will be forbidden to encourage users to subscribe to a newsletter by promising them they will be receiving promotions. Providing commercial offers to people who register completing a form will be impossible, or collecting data if it’s not relevant for the form’s purpose.

The infographic shows the new definitions of previous authorisation and everything this will imply for the companies from a practical point of view.

Heavy penalties for non-compliance of the regulation

Like any other regulation, the GDPR will involve sanctions for those companies who don’t respect the imposed conditions. The fines can go up to 4% of the company’s global turnover, with a 20 million euros limit. With this strategy, the European Parliament hopes to end the problem of violation of personal data on the web.

Companies will have to be sure their providers are also obeying the GDPR

Any company that collects personal data will have to be completely sure that their providers, which will also be processing this data, respects the GDPR’s demands. This is the case of marketing campaigns, which are sent to third parties through professional solutions like Sarbacane.

As a leading mailing company in France, we take every needed action to meet the GDPR regulation, and we have a team working on the issue, as well as a register which allows us to have an up-to-date view of the personal data handling. In addition, we put this data into European Union’s frame. Our compliance of the GDPR allows our clients to easily face the transition to this regulation in May 2018.