We have all had emails with the subject line ‘Action required’, or ‘Please respond’, or ‘Accept our new terms’, and so on. Every single business is seeking our consent to subscribe to their new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) policy, and frankly I am glad about this from more than just a personal data perspective. Not only does this stop companies I no longer remember from contacting me or storing my data, it has also made my job as an email marketer much easier.
How does that make any sense though, as surely other people are not consenting to being marketed to as well? Well, yes exactly, and this is what makes GDPR such an excellent regulation; not only does it force a company to delete all their stored personal data relating to you off their systems (by EU law!), it removes any dead subscribers from your marketing list too. If people are not interested in receiving marketing emails from you then they almost certainly don’t want to see your latest offerings or interact with your brand. So why hold onto these dead subscribers?
I have recently deleted more than 2000 customers off my company’s systems to abide with the GDPR regulation. Something then happened that I never thought I would see in my career: More than 80% of my marketing list interacted with my emails each and every time. Before I was lucky if I hit 15%, but 80%, this was unbelievable. It truly opened my eyes to the ridiculous amount of dead subscribers I had on record. Now though, as a positive consequence of GDPR compliance, I can market to people who are genuinely interested in my company’s latest deals and industry news, then smile when I look over my monthly analysis reports. Thanks GDPR.
