Are you creating new email marketing campaigns for your business? Before you start, make sure you’re adhering to the GDPR compliance checklist.
On May 25th, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) went into effect, causing many companies to address how they handle and protect customer data. The GDPR enforces significant new requirements on what businesses disclose in their privacy policies and requires businesses to protect the personal data and privacy of EU citizens for transactions that occur within EU member states. To help you meet GDPR requirements when creating email marketing and other campaigns for your business, members of the Forbes Technology Council share their GDPR compliance checklist as well as the benefits that the new regulations provide.
Complying with GDPR Requirements
Failure to comply with GDPR can result in fines of up to 4 percent of global annual revenues or €20 million, depending on which is higher. Not only does GDPR non-compliance lead to hefty fines, it also leads to bad business practices.
Most companies have limited visibility into the complexity of millions of endpoints within their network, and in today’s globalized economy, employees are often virtually accessing sensitive company data. A recent Ponemon Institute survey found that 55 percent of vulnerable endpoints contain sensitive data.
A Clutch study also revealed that while 64 percent of employees use company-approved devices, only 40 percent are regulated for using personal devices for work purposes. There is a significant amount of customer data circling around your network, and even one compromised device could cause your company a lot of damage. It is critical for your business to conduct an internal audit in order to develop effective incident and data breach response procedures.
Companies like Facebook and Google are already facing $8.8 billion lawsuits for failure to comply with the new data rules. With the recent news surrounding customer data privacy and regulation issues at Facebook and Google, a similar law could come to pass in the U.S. soon. Executing an action plan built on visibility, effective auditing, and a dedicated team of professionals across your IT, security, and legal departments will ensure your business is GDPR compliant, now and in the future.
The GDPR Compliance Checklist
If your company does business with prospects and customers in the EU, you must obtain “explicit consent” to collect and store their personal data. Explicit consent should be voluntary, meaning the user must opt-in or agree to the data collection.
In order to be GDPR compliant, review your policies and practices to be sure you are letting customers know exactly what data you collect, what you do with it, and how you will store it.
Here’s a brief GDPR compliance checklist to make sure your business is meeting the requirements:
- Revise your privacy policy. Make sure you take the time to review and update your privacy policy with GDPR guidelines in mind.
- Check your opt-in and contact forms. If you collect data for email marketing purposes, add consent to your subscription with a simple opt-in form.
- Inform your customers about cookies and affiliate links. Don’t forget to ask for consent before your customers click on any affiliate links that you display, so they are informed that you use cookies that can track their activity.
- Make your social media compliant. Your social media should also clearly outline any customer data you collect or store from social interactions.
To further ensure that your privacy policy is in compliance with GDPR, check out VeraSafe’s Privacy Policy Checklist.
The Benefits of GDPR
Regulations aside, GDPR compliance can make your business more efficient, secure, and competitive. By addressing the checklist above, GDPR can provide the following benefits for your business:
- Strengthen your cybersecurity in order to build better data protection and establish a security-conscious workflow.
- Enhance your data management by auditing all the data you have and minimizing the data storages, so you can better organize and refine your data management processes moving forward.
- Increase Return on Investment (ROI). Targeting a defined audience of highly relevant leads and customers that actually want to hear from you leads to higher click-through rates, conversion rates, and social sharing.
- Promote audience loyalty and trust by showing your customers that you care about their privacy and data protection.
- Be the first to implement a new business culture and prioritize the values of data security in your employees and company social responsibility.
