> As a result, some email marketers stand to lose 80 percent of their marketing lists -- or face huge fines from the EU if they keep trying to email these people without permission.
Of course, someone who loses 80% of their list the first time they ask their audience if they're still interested _might_ consider giving some thought to what value they were actually providing in the first place.
The mantra in sales is that "no" really means "tell me more".
So I don't expect anyone in marketing and sales to consider this as anything other than a challenge to find new and more effective ways of getting their mail into people's inboxes.
And this is why, despite the efforts of my parents to raise a well-behaved son, I do not answer the phone when I do not recognize the number and directly add "sales executives" people to the junk list.
I do use commercial products, usually because I actually searched for them. I then contact the company, which is usually ready to come and give a presentation.
And then comes the thing which really amazes me. I always tell them very clearly , several times: I do not want to hear any marketing bs or the fact that what they are selling is important. I already know this.
I also tell them I will discuss in very, very deep details such and such topic and I want someone knowledgeable to come or call in.
What amazes me everytime is that they are so surprised when they loose a 5 digit contract because they did everything but what I asked them, and that I end the meeting after 15 minutes.
I know first hand that selling is though. I also know that for such contracts I've need to actually listen to simple requests from a prospective customer.
What we really need is a way to tell salespeople to fuck off and die in a goddamned fire, in a way that truly expresses the soul-deep, sheer hatred I feel for them at that very moment, that makes them feel unending shame for even existing.
I may have anger issues.
On a normal day, I just sort of hate them, kind of the same way I hate real estate salespersons, bad drivers and anyone making over $100K who bitches about the middle class being hammered.
This article is pretty bad. It gets a bunch of stuff wrong.
> The GDPR requires companies to send emails to people on their mailing list who have never bought anything, asking permission to keep emailing them
Emailing those people was already illegal under PECR. GDPR hasn't changed the legality of sending unsolicited email to people that you don't have a business relationship with.
> "People are not opting back in," says Michael Horn, the director of data science for digital marketing agency Huge. "It's one thing for your customers who don't have a relationship with the brand to decline and not respond, but you're also losing a sales channel."
GDPR does not force a business to get consent for all processing. This is a persistant myth. If you have an existing business relationship and you obtained the email address legally you can rely on legitimate interests.
> "You never read the terms and conditions when you sign up for some website.
GDPR requires companies to make their T&Cs a lot simpler and clearer. This is a good thing. If you know people aren't reading your T&Cs how can you expect those people to be bound by them?
> Under these regulations, companies are relatively free to send emails to customers who have purchased something from them. But sending email to non-customers is common practice in the email marketing world. A lot of companies ask for email addresses when you visit their web site, even if you don't buy anything. Others buy email lists from third parties.
This is what people are defending. Sending junk email to addresses that you've bought. Getting someone's email address for one purpose and use it for another. (And, again, these are already illegal under PECR).
> Although the GDPR rules are only for the EU, European citizens living abroad get the same protections.
No. GDPR applies to EU residents.
Someone somewhere is making a lot of money giving people terrible advice about GDPR.
And they're updated privacy policy still allows them to track whether people are opening e-mails or not... I wonder why most people don't seem to buy into the privacy claims :-)
It seems to me that the whole privacy notice thing is another version of the "bury them in discovery" tactic that lawyers use. Only a lawyer can read and understand all of these policies.
What we need are privacy notices that describe in plain language how a company's policy deviates from some standard privacy policy that we do take the time to understand.
If I were renting a car, I'd need to know how its operation is different from other cars. I don't need to read about how to do everything.
> What we need are privacy notices that describe in plain language how a company's policy deviates from some standard privacy policy that we do take the time to understand.
And that’s exactly one point the GDPR asks for:
(39) ... The principle of transparency requires that any information and communication relating to the processing of those personal data be easily accessible and easy to understand, and that clear and plain language be used. ...
only becuase they offer zero ways to control data sharing and communication. it is a legal document, and as such as dense, useless, and meaningless for non-lawyers (even for lawyers not currently involved in litigation with either parties)
absolutely none of those email help the sender gets any closer to be gdpr compliant, but we knew that since the cookie fiasco. just more of the same.
where is everyone who were saying they would send the "nightmare gdpr letter to google" on day 1 of gdpr? claiming that no company in the world could comply? I guess nobody expected useless emails and popups with no data control options to be enough for every EU regulator.
Pop-ups with no data control are no longer enough, but a simple "all or nothing" control is.
Why would any company decide that it's better to lose a potential customer than to let them partially opt out, is beyond me... but that's their choice if they wish so.
I think it's routine to include a link to an image in every email. When the URL is loaded, they know you've opened it.
But this isn't reliable. People who block images don't record that they opened it. It's entirely possible that this accounts for "No one is opening those" privacy policy emails.
I think I saw statistics somewhere that most people read their mail via the web interface of their email provider, not via a client, and I don't know whether web clients block remote content loading.
It would probably not help or change anything for the average person, but I would love a Creative Commons style initiative for privacy policies. It should provide a quick overview and indicate what data is collected and how it is kept.
I imagine that there must be some sort of similarities from one policy to the other to the kinds of data that are being collected and to the ways it’s being stored. Enough such that you could make a privacy policy out of those sort of easily indicated modular/progressive parts that Creative Commons provides for copyright licenses.
Oh... no...