Disclaimer of liability: This blog post is not legal advice for your company to comply with EU data protection laws such as the GDPR. Instead, it provides background information to help you better understand the GDPR. This legal information is not the same as legal advice, where an attorney applies the law to your specific circumstances. We therefore insist that you consult a lawyer if you want advice on your interpretation of this information or its accuracy.
In short, you should not rely on it for legal advice or as a recommendation of any particular legal understanding.
It is not enough to make a few changes to your company’s privacy and forget about them. Under the GDPR or the General Data Protection Regulation, which is now included in EU law, companies need “data protection through design and standard”.
This means building data security and privacy into all aspects of your company’s data management strategy. From data collection to storage, maintenance, transfer, use and cleaning, it is important to maintain your contact information ethically and securely.
Although we are not consultants for the GDPR, we can follow the experts and present their recommendations. This includes collecting clear consent for communication, securely managing data and implementing requirements such as cookie banners and data protection notices.
One of the easiest ways to meet these requirements is with GDPR compliance software.
The GDPR compliance software supports companies in managing customer data, consent forms and data security. On some platforms, customers of a company can also edit the personal data that is stored or processed about them.
What are personal data under the GDPR?
Contain personal data Information relating to individuals that can be identified from itwhether directly or indirectly. Pseudonymized data can help reduce data protection risks. According to this definition, however, it is still personal data. The GDPR applies to the fully or partially automated processing of personal data, for example a form on your website, or to the processing of personal data that is part of a filing system.
How GDPR Affects Email Campaigns
When the GDPR whisper first emerged many moons ago, one of the questions most confused business owners had was whether they could keep emailing their existing contacts.
As an email marketer in the world of GDPR, you need to collect freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous consent (Article 32) before sending e-mail.
In order to comply with data protection in your email campaigns, you must use the following methods:
- If you need all the leads, then you need to sign up specifically for communication before sending any email campaigns.
- Give contacts an easy way to edit or remove their personal information.
- Deletion of contact data that you no longer need or after the storage time specified in your general terms and conditions.
To get a clear overview of all contact details, you can synchronize your current lead and customer data as well as their latest subscription and approval status between apps with a bidirectional data synchronization. You can also implement a consent management platform to collect and manage consent for all contacts.
Simplify GDPR compliance with a consent management platform
An essential part of the GDPR is the documentation of the consent of each contact to save their data and to communicate with them. While you can use built-in features in any of your apps, it is also helpful to choose a dedicated consent management platform (CMP). Here are some of the most important CMPs to consider:
- Didomi is a popular platform for consent and preference management with comprehensive solutions for collecting, storing and using user consents and preferences. After the setup process is complete, you can see a 100% compliance score for your company. With your data protection center, you can also offer customers a special area where they can easily access and manage their consents and preferences.
- Piwik PRO was developed as an analytics platform and now includes a Consent Manager with which you can manage the compliance of your marketing stack in one central location. It’s designed to bring your tools up to date with GDPR, California’s CCPA, Brazilian LGPD, and other privacy laws around the world.
Other apps to optimize GDPR compliance
In addition to introducing a consent management platform, there are various other types of apps that you can use to manage your contacts in a compliant manner. Here are some GDPR-friendly apps to add to your stack:
- The LogicGate Risk Cloud is an agile GRC cloud solution (governance, risk and compliance). It includes enterprise-level solutions for risk management, compliance management and data protection.
- Boxcryptor increases the security of your cloud storage through encryption for OneDrive, Dropbox and Google Drive, among others. It’s free to use for one storage provider on two devices, and you can upgrade for unlimited devices, providers, and advanced file name encryption.
- Onna integrates, standardizes and protects knowledge platforms in a central and secure location. The connectors include Google Suite, Microsoft 365, Dropbox Business, Zoom, and Slack Enterprise.
- iubenda instantly generates cookie banners and terms and conditions tailored to your business, tech stack, and the data you collect. It is particularly valuable for websites and small businesses to be able to meet legal requirements quickly and easily.
- PieSync and its two-way data synchronization tool existed before GDPR, but it offers some useful benefits for secure data management and up-to-date contact information, including subscription status. With two-way synchronization, you can create a “single source of truth” between your apps and make it easier to use and manage your customer data. In addition to subscriptions, you can also sync consent status and settings between apps with customizable filters and rules.
- Fathom Analytics was co-founded by entrepreneur and author Paul Jarvis. Fathom Analytics offers simple, fast and data protection-oriented website analyzes as an alternative to Google Analytics. No personal information is collected, so it is immediately GDPR compliant and you don’t need to include it in your cookie notification.
Keep your company compliant
To maximize your company’s GDPR compliance, there are certain steps you need to take and check boxes to make. However, there are ways to optimize the process. GDPR compliance software can reduce many headaches and make it easier to address key requirements so you can get back to your other business goals sooner.