Marketing in a Post-GDPR World!

Marketing in a Post-GDPR World!


The purpose of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is to compel marketers to be more thoughtful, transparent, and respectful of the data they collect and use. Realistically, that means marketers need to take a step back - to stop personalizing every piece of information without regard for what is appropriate for the consumer.

GDPR gives the power to consumers to control the use of their data. Any European consumer can call out any company and ask the company to account for the data they've collected and how it's being used.

To master marketing in post-GDPR world, Gartner analyst Bryan Yeager has said that marketers should elevate the importance of privacy as part of their data-driven initiatives. "Audit your current marketing activities, including what data has been collected and how it's processed. Co-ordinate closely with your legal and privacy teams about your approach. And think about how you can use a pivotal moment like GDPR as a way to engender value and trust in your future engagements with customers", he suggested.

It's very concerning to know that a very whopping 41% of marketers admit to not fully understanding both the GDPR law and the best practices around the use of consumers' personal data.

To quickly check if you're complying with GDPR today, see if you can answer 'Yes' to the following:
  1. You've built privacy settings into the digital products and websites - and have them switched on by default.
  2. You regularly conduct privacy impact assessments, strengthen the way you seek permission to use personal data, document how you use personal data, and improve the way you communicate data breaches.

To put it simply, if you have a list of leads, you can't send them a promotional email UNLESS they have given you consent for it. You can't even send them an email asking if they want to hear more from you, and as such, is a violation of GDPR.

In August 2016, Flybe sent an email to 3.3 million people in their database with the subject line "Are your details correct?". In theory, this sounds like a smart strategy, but unfortunately, these 3.3 million people had previously opted out (unsubscribed) to marketing emails and thereby gave no consent to be contacted. Result? A fine of 70,000 pounds.
Key takeaway: If your customers have opted-out of marketing emails, don't email them - it's as simple as that. You're breaking the law if you do.

Best practices to keep yourself GDPR compliant

1. Signup Forms: 

Don't assume a person wants to receive your future offers just because she made a purchase. Don't assume a person who opts-in for a newsletter subscription also wants all your marketing materials. And please - remove all pre-ticked boxes that seek permission for future contact from your emails.



Consent must be very clear, and the retailer must keep records of consent under the GDPR's accountability principle.

2. Consent Settings

The right to be forgotten has become one of the most talked-about rulings in EU Justice Court history. It gives people the right to have old or false personal data removed, and it has already been implemented with companies like Google, which was forced to remove pages from its search engine results in order to comply.



As a marketer, it will be your responsibility to make sure that your users can easily access their data, and remove consent for its use, in line with the right to be forgotten. 

This can be as simple as including an unsubscribe link within your email marketing template and linking to a user profile that allows users to manage their email preferences (as shown in the example below).



3. Take What You Need

Marketers get greedy when it comes to getting formed filled out by customers. We tend to ask for information that we might not even require. Ask yourself, do I really need to know someone's favorite holiday destination before they subscribe to our newsletter? Probably not.

To stop the collection of unnecessary data, GDPR requires you to legally justify the processing of personal data you collect. Don't worry - this is not very complicated.

What this means is that you need to focus on the data that's really useful to you, and stop asking for the "good to haves". If you really need to know a piece of customer information, and can prove why you need it, then you can continue asking for it. But try to avoid collecting any unnecessary data, and stick with the basics.

Actionable tip for GDPR-compliant marketing


Data collection: If you still buy mailing lists, it's probably a bad idea to continue. In fact, you should dump the data you bought right away, because a single complaint from a customer about a breach of consent can subject you to a penalty of up to 4% of your gross revenue. Instead, start fresh. Find new ways of collecting opt-in data by introducing clear, brief web-forms. 

Scan your list: Go through your data list periodically and remove the data without an record of opting in. For new subscribers. make sure that they want to receive emails from you by sending them a re-confirmation email after they opt-in for a mailing list.

Content marketing: Content is more important than ever in a post-GDPR world. Since you can only send your communications to interested people, you need a lot of content to generate that interest. Also, you can ask customers to subscribe in order to access content like e-books, infographics, webinars and whitepapers.

Pop-ups: Invite website visitors to add themselves to a mailing list by launching a pop-up on your website. The conversion rate of pop-ups is only around 3%, but like other marketing communications such as emails and Facebook ads, if the pop-ups are launched at the right time with the right message, they can give you a higher conversion rate of up to 40%.

Data storage: In a data-conscious world, you cannot afford to keep records in a spreadsheet and manage the data manually. You need a CRM application where you, and your sales team, can keep updating the data and centralizing your data collection. Of course, CRM applications come with a lot of other benefits as well.

Social selling: Since reaching customers over email is subject to some legal restrictions, find new ways of reaching out to them outside the scope of the GDPR law. Educate your sales team on social selling and connecting with customers on social media sites. Social media will also give your salespeople some perspective on your customers and help them approach with the right message.

Push notifications: You may also take a shot at push notifications. These are pop-ups that seek permission from website visitors to send them promotional notifications. One advantage of this is that once the customer allows you to send them push notifications, they will receive notifications from you even after they have closed your website. One disadvantage of push notifications is that they cannot be personalized, since IP addresses are anonymous.

Privacy policy: Update your privacy statement to let people know that you are GDPR compliant. Mention what you do with customer data you collect and that you don't engage in any practices in violation of customer privacy.

Conclusion

Remember, GDPR hasn't been enacted to stop marketers from communicating with customers. Quite the opposite, actually. It's designed to increase the quality of customer data. The best and most resourceful marketers are seeing the bigger picture and recognizing that it's an opportunity to personalize messages for their prospects and customers, rather than using the traditional one-size-fits-all approach to marketing.

The rules of GDPR compliance are quite simple: don't contact someone unless they specifically ask you to. Don't assume they want to hear from you. Don't cold contact them, and don't send them irrelevant information that they didn't request. If you can do all that, then you've done your job in complying with GDPR.

Is your marketing GDPR compliant?

    • Sticky Posts

    • 10 simple e-commerce marketing tips to boost sales

      Congratulations! You've finally set up that e-commerce store you've been thinking about for a long time. Hopefully it wasn't too difficult. Even if it was, the effort will be totally worth it when you start seeing some orders come through. Now that the store is live, let's take a look at some marketing tips you can apply for sales growth. 1. Avoid cart abandonment If you've ever shopped online, you might have added a product to the cart but then decided not to purchase it. This is known as cart abandonment.

    • Marketing in a post COVID-19 world!

      Consumers across countries are increasingly spending more time on a wide variety of digital activities, right from online grocery shopping, to video conferencing, to tele-medicine. There is a good chance that you performed one or more of the following activities during this lockdown, thanks to COVID 19: Cooked a meal Made a TikTok Video Signed up for a remote learning session Consulted a doctor online (or ordered medicines online) Shopped for groceries online A study by Hunter, a food and beverage

    • Inbound Marketing 101: The Foundational Blocks of Inbound Marketing Strategy

      According to a behaviour survey, 68% of the buyers use sources such as blogs to evaluate the product even before considering it. Before buying a product, we do a lot of research to learn more about the product through communities, blogs, social media,

    • How Zylker doubled their webinar registrations!

      Webinars are good educational resources to gather qualified leads for your product. But what if your visitors are dropping off from your webinar landing page without signing up? What more could you do to convert visitors into registrants? This is the

    • The ideology behind why features tell, but benefits sell

      Do you think there's any truth to this? Do features only tell, and benefits sell?  Well, let's see why we should focus on benefits rather than features as the great marketing wizards, David Ogilvy and Steve Jobs proved to be the best examples leveraging

      • Recent Topics

      • javax.mail.authenticationfailedexception 535 authentication failed

        Hi, I am facing 535 authentication failed error when trying to send email from zoho desktop as well as in webmail. Can you suggest to fix this issue,. Regards, Rekha

      • Client Portal ZOHO ONE

        Dear Zoho one is fantastic option for companies but it seems to me that it is still an aggregation of aps let me explain I have zoho books with client portal so client access their invoice then I have zoho project with client portal so they can access their project but not their invoice without another URL another LOGIN Are you planning in creating a beautiful UI portal for client so we can control access to client in one location to multiple aps at least unify project and invoice aps that would

      • Zoho Creator customer portal users

        Hi, I'm in a Zoho One subscription with our company. I'm running a project now that involves creating a Zoho Creater application and using the Zoho Creator Customer Portal.  At most we need 25 customer portal users. In our Zoho One plan we only get 3

      • DKIM Verification Failed (Namecheap)

        Hi! I have already set up the TXT records in Namecheap but I keep getting the "Verification Failed" pop up. Was wondering if I'm the only one who has this problem and can anyone help me with this? Thanks!

      • Emails stuck in Queue

        Hi there, Since yesterday I have a few out going emails stuck in a queue. It say it will auto retry sending however nothing is happening. It seems to be affecting roughly 50% of my outgoing emails. Please help Thanks

      • Soft Bounce from transational emails from BREVO (Sendinblue)

        I manage the website of a client who uses your EMAIL service for the domain floranativadobrasil.com. And I use the BREVO email service, previously called SendinBlue, to send transactional emails about events specific to the website. All emails sent to

      • Ability to Edit YouTube Video Title, Description & Thumbnail After Publishing

        Hi Zoho Social Team, How are you? We would like to request an enhancement to Zoho Social that enables users to edit YouTube video details after the video has already been published. Your team confirmed that while Zoho Social currently allows editing the

      • Introducing Multi-Asset Support in Work Orders, Estimates, and Service Appointments

        We’re excited to announce a highly requested enhancement in Zoho FSM — you can now associate multiple assets with Work Orders, Estimates, and Service Appointments. This update brings more clarity, flexibility, and control to your field service operations,

      • Getting an error Address not found Your message wasn't delivered

        Hey, I'm trying to configure zoho mail for my website https://businessentity.org/ The email is meredith.karter@businessentity.org I'm able to successfully send the mails but when someone sends an email to above mail, this error shoots up: Address not

      • Support Uploading YouTube Videos Longer Than 60 Minutes

        Hi Zoho Social Team, How are you? We would like to request support for uploading YouTube videos longer than 60 minutes directly through Zoho Social. Your support team informed us that Zoho Social currently cannot upload videos over 60 minutes due to “API

      • Need Faster Help? Try Live Chat Support

        Hello there, We understand that sometimes, whether you’re facing an issue, exploring a feature, or need quick clarification, sending an email and waiting for a response just doesn’t cut it. You need answers, and you need them now. That’s exactly why we

      • Can't deactivate Spell Check

        Hi Community, right now I'm using the Zoho Mail Desktop-Software. So far, so good.. many possibilities. Overall very nice. What is extremely annoying right now, is that we are not able to deactivate the Spell Check feature. And we are barely able to focus

      • Zoho Toolkit Email Signature Generator

        I'm having real issues with the email signature generator with no matter where I host the photo, Zoho doesn't seem to show the photo on the link provided?

      • Company Policy Upload - Request All EE to review and sign

        How can I upload policies into Zoho People and have the employees review them and sign off saying they agree, etc.? Also, if I make a revision to a policy, I would like that changed or updated policy to be distributed or have the employees notified that

      • Zoho Sign Global Settings vs. Template and Document

        Hello, We are running into an issue on a current use case. We already use Zoho Sign. Now that KBA is available, we want to begin using it in our tax delivery process, by allowing clients to sign electronically, but also download a copy of their return

      • Zoho Mail Desktop Crashes on Linux - Ubuntu 24 LTS

        Hi, I have been trying to run the desktop app on Ubuntu for the past few day with no luck. I have tried both the .deb package and the appImage. When I attempt to open the app. It just crashes immediately. The crash error dialog appeared once and I cant

      • Can't login to Zoho mail

        I'm logged into Zoho but when I try to go in zoho mail I get: Invalid request! The input passed is invalid or the URL is invoked without valid parameters. Please check your input and try again. I just set up my mx records and stuff with namecheap a few

      • Zoho IP blocked by SpamCop

        Hi, Many of my emails are blocked and I receive this:  INVALID_ADDRESS, ERROR_CODE :550, ERROR_CODE :spamcop.mimecast.org Blocked - see https://www.spamcop.net/bl.shtml?136.143.188.51. - https://community.mimecast.com/docs/DOC-1369#550 [DGwIYPPSOfWI

      • Differences between Zoho Books and Zoho Billing

        Without a long drawn out process to compare these. If you were looking at these Books and Billing, what made you opt for one and not the other. Thanks

      • Insert Image into Notebook page

        Prior to today, I could add images to my notebook pages. Today when I tried to do this I got an error message that said something like, "There's been a problem on our end. Try again later." So, I've tried all the ways I know how, but I can't insert an

      • Custom validation in CRM schema

        Validation rules in CRM layouts work nicely, good docs by @Kiran Karthik P https://help.zoho.com/portal/en/kb/crm/customize-crm-account/validation-rules/articles/create-validation-rules I'd prefer validating data input 'closer to the schema'

      • No Ability to Rename Record Template PDFs in SendMail Task

        As highlighted previously in this post, we still have to deal with the limitation of not being able to rename a record template when sent as a PDF using the SendMail Task. This creates unnecessary complexity for what should be a simple operation, and

      • Server error when trying to Data > Sort > Custom Sort

        Been using Data > Sort > Custom Sort for a while, now it has suddenly stopped working. When selecting the same data range and trying to execute, I get "Sorry! There was a problem saving your last edit. Please try again."

      • To Assign a genrated pdf to a file upload field using delug

        content = "<html><body>HTML Content on page One <div style='page-break-after:always'></div> HTML Content on page Two </body></html>"; file = zoho.file.convertToPDF(content); file.setFileName("Name of the file"); <variableName> = <FormLinkName>[ID == input.ID];

      • TArgets To Accounts (Modules)

        How can i set sale target to Customers (Accounts Module)

      • Breaking barriers with multilingual WhatsApp templates in IM

        Ever wondered what it feels like to be greeted in your own language by a brand you love? A “Welcome!” feels nice, but a “¡Bienvenido!” or “स्वागत है!” feels personal. In today’s global world, conversations often need to cross both time zones and cross

      • Super Admin Logging in as another User

        How can a Super Admin login as another user. For example, I have a sales rep that is having issues with their Accounts and I want to view their Zoho Account with out having to do a GTM and sharing screens. Moderation Update (8th Aug 2025): We are working

      • How to share private Opportunities with whole org at an account level

        Opportunities are currently set to private, so our sales team only sees their own opportunities, along with their manager and upper leadership. The need is the ability for the rest of the Org to see the opportunities at an account level, not within the

      • New in Smart Prompt: Record Assistant for contextual assistance, and support for new AI models

        Smart Prompt helps teams stay informed and move faster by providing relevant suggestions where work happens in CRM. With this update, Smart Prompt becomes more adaptable to your organization’s AI preferences. You can now choose which Large Language Model

      • Problema Verificacion con proveedor NIC.AR

        No puedo realizar la verificación del correo, he seguido los pasos indicados y configurado los MX. Y no puedo verificar el correo. He leido en el foro que otros han tenido el mismo problema. Alguno pudo solucionarlo?

      • How to remove some users in zoho accounts

        How to remove some users in Zoho accounts.

      • Unified Inbox for all, including fetched mails

        I fetch mails from different third-parties mailboxes. But I need to switch mailbox too see fetched mails. It's strange. All mailboxes have one shared disk space for own mail and fetched mail, but why do we need to switch mailbox (on the left bottom) to

      • Whatsapp Limitation Questions

        Good day, I would like to find out about the functionality or possibility of all the below points within the Zoho/WhatsApp integration. Will WhatsApp buttons ever be possible in the future? Will WhatsApp Re-directs to different users be possible based

      • Users Not Automatically Being Added To WorkDrive Team

        I have already created a ticket for this issue, but the support team doesn't seem to understand what's happening. Our organization started with a trial of Zoho Workplace around November 10, 2025. I created 10 users, including myself. I sent out the invites,

      • Synchronization between Gmail and Zoho Mail

        Hello! I am using Zoho Mail within the Zoho One platform. I have completed the basic setup and added all the required DNS records with our domain provider. Our goal is to set up two-way synchronization between our current Gmail inbox and Zoho Mail, but

      • IMAP login problem

        I have my domain hosted with zoho @wilson.ie I have added a new user and have enabled IMAP access to this user account The user can login to zoho mail on the web. When we enter the server settings into Outlook as per below, Outlook cannot login to the

      • Contact data removes Account data when creating a quote

        Hi, Our customer has address fields in their quote layout which should be the address of the Account. They prefill the information, adding the account name - the address data is populated as per what is in the account - great. However when they then add

      • Changes to subform in Zoho CRM Portal Timeline History Unavailable

        Hi Support Team, We have noticed a feature limitation in the Zoho CRM portal. We created a portal for our vendors to edit records directly, but when vendors make updates, the Modified Time and Date fields are not being updated. Additionally, these updates

      • This mobile number has been marked spam. Please contact support.

        Hi Support, Can you tell me why number was marked as spam. I have having difficult to add my number as you keep requesting i must use it. My number is +63....163 Or is Zoho company excluding Philippines from their services?

      • Function #11: Apply unused credits automatically to invoices

        Today, we bring you a custom function that automatically applies unused credits from excess payments, credit notes, and retainer payments to an invoice when it is created. Prerequisites: Create a Connection named "zbooks" to successfully execute the function.

      • Next Page