GDPR in Marketing

What is GDPR?    

      GDPR (General Data Protection Regulatory) is a new digital privacy regulation that came into force on May 25, 2018. It standardizes a wide range of different privacy laws across the European Union, with a single centralized regulation to protect users in all member states. Companies also have to regularly conduct privacy impact assessments, strengthen their consent to use personal data, document how they use personal data, and improve the way they transmit data violations (Ghosh, 2018). Although members of the European Union enforce the law, sanctions include companies outside the European Union.

     Basically GDPR is a regulation to protect personal information such as email, phone number, bank detail, location etc. Companies who do not comply with the regulation on personal data are subject to criminal sanctions of up to 4% of its annual earnings or 20 million euros (whichever is greater) (Bergen, 2018).

What will be the effect of GDPR on Marketing?

GDPR appears to affect marketing in three areas; ``data collection``, ``data storage and processing``, and ``data destruction``.

Data Collection:

``Any organization which attracts people to its website and wants to collect data via a form must communicate clearly to that person what the data is going to be used for`` (What is the GDPR? And What Does it Mean for the Marketing Industry, 2019).

Data Storage and Processing:

Use Limitation: Companies can use the data they collect and store for clear and legitimate purposes. They cannot use this data for purposes other than those they reported while collecting their data.

Security: After the personal data are collected, this data; should be kept in accordance with the security criteria defined in GDPR against theft, improper use, accidental deletion, disclosure, alteration.

Data Destruction:

If an individual requests the company to delete their personal data, the company is obliged to delete this data as soon as possible. If they have shared this data with other institutions, they have to make sure that all data have been deleted from their systems.

Reference:

Bergen, B., 2018. GDPR: What All Marketers Need To Know. [online] Salesforce Blog. Available at: <https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2018/04/gdpr-what-marketers-need-to-know.html> [Accessed 16 June 2020].

Blog.hubspot.com. 2019. What Is The GDPR? And What Does It Mean For The Marketing Industry?. [online] Available at: <https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/what-is-the-gdpr> [Accessed 16 June 2020].

Ghosh, D., 2018. How GDPR Will Transform Digital Marketing. [online] Harvard Business Review. Available at: <https://hbr.org/2018/05/how-gdpr-will-transform-digital-marketing> [Accessed 16 June 2020].