The General Data Protection Act (GDPR)

Let’s start with Direct Mail, obviously a subject very close to our heart! Our first piece of GDPR related good news is… Direct Mail will not require explicit ‘opted in’ consent prior to you communicating with prospects and customers. Whereas the updated regulations will heavily affect email communications, which are now required by law to gain opted in consent prior to sending any campaigns, Direct Mail can still be used to engage your customer base and prospects as long as the piece is within the ‘legitimate interests’ of both the sender and the recipient. Whilst this is great news for you and your campaigns, you do have to remember that it is paramount to not send mail to anyone who has previously unsubscribed from your campaigns. As long as you stick to these simple fundamentals, you are free to carry on sending your Direct Mail campaigns and in fact, given the impact the regulations will have on other marketing channels, perhaps you should even be sending more!

In a survey carried out by the DMA, 81% of those surveyed were under the impression that Direct Mail would be greatly impacted by GDPR and therefore would be reticent to send campaigns as a result. This is one of these GDPR myths we referred to earlier in this page.. In reality, it couldn’t be further from the truth.

“An optimist see’s the opportunity in every difficulty”

GDPR is causing some widespread concern and in some aspects, rightly so. It is our duty, whether a data controller or processor, to absolutely ensure the data we hold and process is treated with the utmost care and consideration to protect the privacy of the people will hold information on. We’d like to think however, that was the attitude and approach taken by 99% of businesses in the UK anyway. So in that respect, the new regulations shouldn’t actually affect too much of what we do with data internally and our processes.

What it will encourage and inspire many businesses to do is cultivate and grow warm relationships with prospects and customers and give them the opportunity to really add value to the customer experience. So you can no longer send an email to a prospect without their prior consent? Ok, that seems like a challenge but try to identify the opportunity. A Direct Mail piece linking to a landing page asking for consent for further marketing and offers is a great way to both promote your business and capture data from prospects to help you curate the journey, whilst also remaining GDPR compliant.

The Key Points to Remember

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is an EU regulation enforceable by law designed to ensure the data protection and privacy for all individuals within the European Union. The UK’s impending exit from the European Union has no affect on the enforceability of the regulations in the UK, as it looks set to stay in its current format beyond any departure.

Our Customer engagement policy

At Herald Chase we import and manage data on behalf of our customers mailing campaigns.

In the majority of instances this is supplied to us directly from the customer.

We encourage that any data sent electronically is encrypted.

The data is imported and used for the sole purpose of the campaign. Unless the data is part of a wider response handling campaign or it is data we manage, this data will be automatically deleted within 60 days of the mailing date.

Where data is managed by ourselves each customers data is held in separate folders, and backed up on a daily basis.