The demanding existence of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has forced companies, while using personal data, to re-think how they execute their activities. Marketing, especially in the digital world GDPR impact on digital marketing, is not an exception.
Whether your organization performs data analysis on its customers’ online activity or uses a mailing list to send electronic marketing, these activities must be a frame in the context of the more stringent obligations imposed by the GDPR applicability.
Moreover, the processing of personal data involving electronic communications should also consider specific rules in the e-Privacy regime, as if the GDPR were not sufficient. This is currently being remodelled into a more stringent regulation that will bring the existing framework into balance with the rules applied under the GDPR.
What is the GDPR?
In April 2016, the European Parliament adopted the GDPR, substituting an outdated 1995 data protection directive. It includes provisions requiring companies to protect EU citizens’ personal data and privacy for transactions occurring within the EU Member States. The GDPR also controls the exportation of personal data outside the EU.
Across all 28 EU Member States, the provisions are consistent, ensuring that businesses have only one requirement to follow within the EU. However, the standard is very high and will require most companies to make a significant investment to reach and maintain it.
What Marketers Need to Know about the GDPR data collection
Collecting data is a core marketing practice, and it has always been. If you don’t have data to work with, you can’t do anything, and this was as true in the age of Don Draper advertising as it is today. The GDPR impact on small business and targets this very first move. As a result, some of your most significant duties as a marketer of any kind rest within the initial selection mechanism.
In the past, from any chosen source, you could obtain whatever data you needed (or wanted), and the rest was up to you. You’re not able to take the data as you like anymore.
Three key GDPR issues impacting the data collection and collection activities are:
- Legal bases for processing
- Getting consent
- Opting out
What types of data are covered by the GDPR for privacy?
- Web details such as location, IP address, data from cookies and RFID tags
- Details on essential identification, such as name, address and ID numbers
- Biometric data
- Political opinions
- Health and genetic data
What’re the Legal Bases for Processing?
The GDPR gives six legal bases for processing data. If you wish to obtain and use some personal information from an EU resident, you need to follow these criteria. They are:
- Contract
- Legal obligation
- Vital interests
- Consent
- Public task
- Legitimate interests
In general, marketers work on the first base: consent. Why? That to fulfil a contract or legal duty, you don’t need to sell it to anyone. Also, it is not a general assignment or within your critical interests. It is optional to use digital marketing, so you need permission.
Conclusion:
Finally, for retailers, the GDPR impact in India has high implications, and it has caused many to reconsider how they work. But if marketers of all kinds come together and adopt the GDPR principles, then and then you’ll have a more willing and committed audience. Still, by protecting their data, you will do your part to conserve their rights and freedoms, which is much more important than any old mailing list.