General Data Protection Regulation

As of May 25, 2018 is GDPR readiness is a mandatory regulation. GDPR is compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation. The European Union is enforcing regulation and the world will comply or be fined substantial penalties.

GDPR affects everyone. Failure to comply can lead to fines of $10 to $23 million no matter the size of your business. Be sure you are ready. Users now have the right to know how their name, email address and physical address is stored and used.

Since 2005 the Federal Trade Commission enacted rules for marketing and online business. The rules support the concept of permission based marketing. Yet so many marketers, small business owners, IT professionals, large and medium sized businesses have ignored the law. As a result, email marketing and any other form of marketing will be strictly regulated because some entities are desperate to meet quota, make a sale or develop a relationship with you.

Here are a few of the GDPR Readiness requirements:

• Email marketing – Recipients of your email marketing materials must have given you permission to contact them and you must also be able to show when and how they did this. 

• Privacy policy – If your site hasn’t got one already, you will need a privacy policy to comply with GDPR. Failure to provide one could lead to a fine.

• Opting out – You must make it easy and straightforward for people to opt-out of your marketing materials. The simplest way of doing this is to provide a contact email or contact number on all your marketing correspondence.

Here is a link to the GDPR Regulations, also, the United Kingdom’s resource guide on compliance. The Information Commissioners Office found at http://ico.org offers a free resource called Preparing for the GDPR in 12 Steps, download it here.