As a digital marketer, you may remember the worrying lead up to GDPR being introduced back in 2018. Whilst this allows companies and users an easy and legitimate framework for holding data and guidelines on how they can collect it – it caused a lot of anxiety regarding cookies, newsletter lists and the future of cold & email marketing strategies.
Now the UK version of this bill is now being introduced, but don’t panic. This actually sits alongside GDPR, and there are a few crucial points that marketers need to know.
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What is Direct Marketing?
Direct marketing is when you reach out to individual users about using your services/buying your products directly – that is, without using a third party to do so. It usually requires communication directly from you as the business to your target audience, and the most popular methods are via text messages, calls, and email marketing.
For a business, it allows you to directly send news/offers/product information to your target audience who have indicated in some way that they are interested in what is being communicated. This newly proposed bill affects how you need to collect data in order to perform any direct marketing, so if you do any of the above – keep reading!
Legitimate Interests
Something marketers tend to struggle with is this: is the consent you’re gathering legitimate? GDPR clarified this already as they referenced direct marketing as an example of legitimate interest:
This provides greater certainty for our members when using legitimate interests as a lawful basis, especially when considered in the context of recent UK and EU case law that both confirmed that direct marketing and advertising could be legitimate interests subject to necessity and balancing tests (Legitimate Interest Impact Assessments)
In a nutshell, we already have defined that marketing directly to the audience/consumer (via emails, calls, texts etc. as covered earlier) is allowed and is seen as legitimate. You need to carefully note how they have indicated that consent is allowed, and that is the main basis of how you comply with legitimate interests.
This can be in many forms, enquiring or purchasing your products/services previously, signing up explicitly to a text/call/email marketing database etc. As long as if someone were to come back and ask why they are being marketed to and who gave you permission, you can give that reason for their consent – this is allowed under GDPR and the new bill.
Cookie Consent
A range of exemptions to consent for cookies are listed in Schedule 12 of the Bill, including strictly necessary, statistical purposes, website appearance and emergency assistance being provided. The DMA believes that many websites that aren’t advertising-supported, such as B2B and corporate websites, may be exempt from cookie consent pop-up banners.
Many websites already have this in place and at the moment, it’s safest to do so. Websites have to comply with a number of different factors and Google is a big influencer in marketing specifically. Google has its own views on cookies and consent, as it outlines in Consent Mode v2 that came out earlier this year.
There’s always a lot of confusion and worry when any new policy or bill comes out related to marketing – but the main thing is to arm yourself with the right information and know that things won’t be too dissimilar to what we’re already complying with.
If you’d like to hear from us how to gather the data from the right potential customers for you and how best to market to them, speak to someone from our digital marketing department for free on a 121 call.
