How GDPR will affect your email lists
I guess by now you are saying; how will WHAT affect my email lists?
Well, the EU is putting a new regulation into action in May of 2018. The General Data Protection Regulation will regulate how personal information belonging to EU citizens should be handled by those who collect it.
The Internet is global. Even if your website is based in the US and targets the US market, you have no control on whether an EU based visitor drops by your site and signs up for a free report or whatever you offer to make them sign up for to your email list. This means that you will have to comply with this regulation. This has some consequences for all of us.
End the automatic entry for newsletters
Free reports are a useful way to get subscribers to our newsletters. Following GDPR, it will be forbidden to automatically post people on to a newsletter when they sign up to receive a free report. Instead, you need to ask an explicit permission to add someone to your mailing list.
That means that you have to inform them when they sign up for the report that they, in addition to receiving the report, will be added to a mailing list and make them accept that they are added. You will need a checkbox where they accept to be entered on your email list.
I am not sure if you will be forced to send the free report even if they choose to not sign up for the newsletter, but based on other consumer rights regulations within EU, this may be the case. I am currently working on getting a clarification on that question.
You can not ask for unnecessary information
An important principle of GDPR is that all collection of information should be at the minimum necessary level. In plain text: You can not ask for more information than you absolutely need to complete the transaction. This means that the sign-up forms in many cases must be shorter. This is nevertheless a good idea, as it increases the response in most cases.
But it also means that in order to send someone a free report, the only relevant information you should ask for is the email address. The recipient's name and other information are no longer relevant.
Your existing lists need to be washed
In the new law, it is also required that the subscriber should be able to demand that his data should be deleted, and he must be able to see what permissions he has given you and to change them. He may also be required to see the information you have registered about him and be able to retrieve this information in a format that he may use further.
In addition, you must be able to prove that you have received an explicit and informed consent to have the customer information you have.
This means that by May 25th, 2018 you must delete illegal data and, if necessary, obtain new approvals from the persons you have on your email list in cases where you do not already have all the legal approvals.
Hopefully, Aweber, MailChimp and others will have systems in place to handle this. But even so, you will still be responsible that the relevant action is taken.
You are the controller.
The regulation differs the responsibility between the roles of the data processor and the data controller. If you use Aweber or similar services to collect the data, they are the data processors. You are the data controller because you define what information should be collected to the list and how the information is used. Both roles have responsibilities when it comes to compliance with the directive.
UPDATED
I have now confirmation from reliable sources that a consequence of this regulation is that people legitimately can choose to receive our free reports without having to sign up for an email list at all. That is a bummer for all of us.
Also, we are not allowed to use the email addresses we receive for any other purposes than the list they sign up for. That means that we can not transfer the emails to other newsletters we may send.
For more information see.
http://www.eugdpr.org/gdpr-faq...
http://www.eugdpr.org/key-chan...
https://www.informationweek.co...
There are also some earlier blogs on this here in WA:
https://my.wealthyaffiliate.co...
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Set up your email/signup forms as a "double opt-in" where once the site visitor completes the form asking to be on the mailing list, an email is generated and sent to their email address where they need to confirm their subscription prior to being added to your list.
I use double opt-ins already. The new thing now is that we need an active confirmation from the visitor. And in all the case studies and advice I have seen regarding this, that means a checkbox in the first step of the sign-up.
Confused as to how them signing up, receiving an email, then confirming their subscription isn't an active confirmation? They actively confirmed. Am I being dense? It wouldn't be the first time! haha
I think it has to do with telling the guy up front what he's signing up for and not "hide" the consent in an email reply that he may or may not read before replying.
Therefore a check in a box apparently is the thing,
This is presently the email that a subscriber is sent where they need to confirm that they want to subscribe. I guess I'll go in and insert additional verbiage that they are consenting to subscribe. This seems to be enough, aside from sending another email asking "do you really want to do this?" and then another asking "are you sure?" lol