GDPR - anyone working in this area?

[anonymous-user]

Woke up to 4 emails from businesses that I know I didn't opt into.

[stevesuk]

For those of you who sent out a "please opt-in" email to a large newsletter distribution list... what level of response did you see? Just seeing whether our own result so far is a disaster ... or just the norm

[jammy-git]

I've heard 20-30% opt-in is about average. Obviously depends on your business, industry, etc, etc.

[Frimley111R]

I can imagine all the businesses that haven't bothered will be wondering what all the fuss was about in a few months. Competitors will have deleted records etc while these others keep theirs and just get on with it.

[ashleyman]

Now that it's 25th May surely they aren't allowed to email for consent as the GDPR is now active?

Had quite a few this morning, in total I've only had a handful that I haven't recognised - mostly recruiters and hotel groups.

[stevesuk]

jammy-git said:

I've heard 20-30% opt-in is about average. Obviously depends on your business, industry, etc, etc.

Thanks - that's a useful stat to quote when people start to complain that their mailing list has been decimated. Personally, I think its better to end up with 20% of your list that are actively interested in what you're sending them - quality rather than quantity.

Out of the dozens I've received to my personal Inbox, I think I've actually bothered to click on about 2. The remainder, I looked at the sender and thought "meh, I don't really care if you don't email me anymore" I'm sure I'm not the only one to do that.

[jammy-git]

The ICO has said you don't have to be fully compliant today, but at least have a plan of action in place. Apparently.

[stevesuk]

jammy-git said:

The ICO has said you don't have to be fully compliant today, but at least have a plan of action in place. Apparently.

Its been a tricky one to judge. I remember all the fuss there was around browser cookies and a change in EU law a few years back. When it was first announced, we started to look at how we could manage sessions without cookies etc. Then as things developed, the potential impact of the law seemed to lessen and lessen until it got to the point where most people more or less ignored it.

GDPR seems to have been taken a lot more seriously, but I don't know how much of that is due to consultants whipping companies up in to a frenzy over the massive potential fines.

I have a hunch that basically nothing will change...

[ashleyman]

stevesuk said:

I looked at the sender and thought "meh, I don't really care if you don't email me anymore" I'm sure I'm not the only one to do that.

I'm the same but I read the emails to find out if they were going to automatically opt me in or assume I want to be unsubscribed. Any auto-opt ins that I don't agree with I manually reply and tell them to unsubscribe me - mostly recruiters!

[Hoofy]

stevesuk said:

jammy-git said:

I've heard 20-30% opt-in is about average. Obviously depends on your business, industry, etc, etc.

Thanks - that's a useful stat to quote when people start to complain that their mailing list has been decimated. Personally, I think its better to end up with 20% of your list that are actively interested in what you're sending them - quality rather than quantity.

Out of the dozens I've received to my personal Inbox, I think I've actually bothered to click on about 2. The remainder, I looked at the sender and thought "meh, I don't really care if you don't email me anymore" I'm sure I'm not the only one to do that.

The problem is that you will have a percentage of people who love what you do and will open it to read instantly then comply instantly, another group who love what you do and will do it when they're not busy but end up forgetting, yet another group who try to remember to read the email but also forget and another group for whom it probably went into spam. So you can expect a lot of losses.

For my opt-in GDPR email, I had 30% open rate and maybe 10-15% opt-in.

[stevesuk]

Hoofy said:

The problem is that you will have a percentage of people who love what you do and will open it to read instantly then comply instantly, another group who love what you do and will do it when they're not busy but end up forgetting, yet another group who try to remember to read the email but also forget and another group for whom it probably went into spam. So you can expect a lot of losses.

For my opt-in GDPR email, I had 30% open rate and maybe 10-15% opt-in.

Just have to hope that some of the previously engaged subscribers you lose, will sign-up again (via a fully GDPR compliant sign-up process) I guess. It does seem a huge waste of effort. The companies that take advantage of our personal data will I'm sure carry on as normal.

I accept there are some situations where sensitive personal data needs to be secured. But for organisations like ours, who simply want to send out a B2B newsletter a couple of times a year, I can't see what the this new law is actually achieving. For the vast majority of subscribers, we only store their business contact details in our database (typically name, company, email) - much of which is probably in the public domain.

I wonder how much money has been squandered by companies collectively around the globe on GDPR compliance?

[Frimley111R]

stevesuk said:

jammy-git said:

The ICO has said you don't have to be fully compliant today, but at least have a plan of action in place. Apparently.

Its been a tricky one to judge. I remember all the fuss there was around browser cookies and a change in EU law a few years back. When it was first announced, we started to look at how we could manage sessions without cookies etc. Then as things developed, the potential impact of the law seemed to lessen and lessen until it got to the point where most people more or less ignored it.

GDPR seems to have been taken a lot more seriously, but I don't know how much of that is due to consultants whipping companies up in to a frenzy over the massive potential fines.

I have a hunch that basically nothing will change...

I was working on this last year and a few people in the business were very sceptical of it as they had had previous types of legislation thrust on them which was going to 'decimate' the industry/be a complete pain in the arse/etc. and all had essentially died a death to the point that no-one bothered much with it at all. From my own work it seemed that despite the hype, as long as you didn't massively spam people or do anything underhand or stupid you'd be fine.

I must admit to being quite surprised how many GDPR emails I have received without any unsubscribe links on them...

[Hoofy]

stevesuk said:

Hoofy said:

The problem is that you will have a percentage of people who love what you do and will open it to read instantly then comply instantly, another group who love what you do and will do it when they're not busy but end up forgetting, yet another group who try to remember to read the email but also forget and another group for whom it probably went into spam. So you can expect a lot of losses.

For my opt-in GDPR email, I had 30% open rate and maybe 10-15% opt-in.

Just have to hope that some of the previously engaged subscribers you lose, will sign-up again (via a fully GDPR compliant sign-up process) I guess. It does seem a huge waste of effort. The companies that take advantage of our personal data will I'm sure carry on as normal.

I accept there are some situations where sensitive personal data needs to be secured. But for organisations like ours, who simply want to send out a B2B newsletter a couple of times a year, I can't see what the this new law is actually achieving. For the vast majority of subscribers, we only store their business contact details in our database (typically name, company, email) - much of which is probably in the public domain.

I wonder how much money has been squandered by companies collectively around the globe on GDPR compliance?

Yep, I've spent over 15 hours on this, unpaid.

My open rates for emails in the past was between 40% and 50%. I think the "yet another GDPR email" thought probably reduced this one to 30%.

[jammy-git]

I imagine opt-in rates have dropped over the last few weeks too as people have gradually got more and more annoyed at receiving said emails.

[anonymous-user]

jammy-git said:

I imagine opt-in rates have dropped over the last few weeks too as people have gradually got more and more annoyed at receiving said emails.

Seems to have made zero difference to Liam Gallagher, Heals, eventim, Morgan motors and Rosetta stone.

Definitely didn't opt in to any of them.

[RM]

jammy-git said:

I've heard 20-30% opt-in is about average. Obviously depends on your business, industry, etc, etc.

I think 20-30% is doing well. With a 40% open rate (pretty good in itself) that means 50-75% of the opens are re-consenting.

I've seen many at 5-10%, only a couple in the 20%+ range.

[kev1974]

I like that Virgin Trains East Coast have kindly given me "one last chance" to opt in to their spam.

Even though in less than 30 days their company/operation is done, and trains handed back to the government to run.

Why bother?

[stevesuk]

desolate said:

Seems to have made zero difference to Liam Gallagher, Heals, eventim, Morgan motors and Rosetta stone.

Definitely didn't opt in to any of them.

Same here... I've had some spam this morning from organisations who'd written to me a week or more ago giving me "one last chance" (that I ignored).

[Hoofy]

stevesuk said:

desolate said:

Seems to have made zero difference to Liam Gallagher, Heals, eventim, Morgan motors and Rosetta stone.

Definitely didn't opt in to any of them.

Same here... I've had some spam this morning from organisations who'd written to me a week or more ago giving me "one last chance" (that I ignored).

TinRobot must be bursting a few blood vessels in his head hearing about this.

[anonymous-user]

Hoofy said:

TinRobot must be bursting a few blood vessels in his head hearing about this.

I suppose the main win will come with data security.

We'll never stop the real spam but all those companies have been in touch about gdpr and I know for a fact I didn't opt in.