GDPR Opt-in: The One Killer Secret

We’ve been banging the drum on GDPR awareness and compliance for nearly two years now. If you haven’t started yet, there’s still time. You can subscribe to our GDPR compliance mini-guides here, which include checklists to use as part of your GDPR action plan.

We’ve had a lot of questions about existing databases and what the best strategy is to secure as many opt-ins as possible.

But the single most frequently asked question is this:

- Should I send a blanket opt-in/opt-out email to my existing B2B contact database?

The short answer is, not yet. You’re still far enough from the deadline for a content-based approach to be effective. The key point is that you need to show your B2B contacts the value of opting in. Really get their buy-in to how valuable your emails are.

At the moment, if you send an email to a contact asking whether they want to opt in or out, you will likely get a binary yes/no result. An email like that does nothing to prove the value of communication with you and is not necessary under current B2B email marketing law. And once a contact opts out, you can’t email them again. So, a blanket opt-in/opt-out email could decimate your marketing database overnight.

At this stage, we recommend planning a campaign of valuable content to your existing B2B database. The result? Some will interact with the email and will become leads (and potentially opt-ins), a few will opt-out (fine, you can’t win them all), and there will be many who don’t respond.

The group that doesn’t respond, but hasn’t opted out, can still be sent content in future campaigns, prior to GDPR becoming law on May 25th 2018, so you still have a good chance of proving your value and securing their opt-in before the deadline. Of course, you don’t want to waste effort, so be sure to gradually remove those contacts who are inactive over longer periods. This will ensure that you build opt-ins from genuinely interested subscribers, have a leaner database and better engagement statistics.

Want to supercharge your GDPR compliance?