Collecting emails for marketing

[TLMartin]

Hi

I love this forum, everyone is so helpful and supportive, I've learnt so much here and hopefully helped people myself too.

Had some great I for on a previous post about how to drive traffic towards my online shop more with the collection of emails and then more focused email marketing (obviously not spamming)

This is an area k think has changed lots and thus I want to check out things I have to ensure I cover.

First when any new customer creates an account on my shop they automatically have the chance to opt out of receiving emails from me (I never have and never will look at selling email lists onwards)

Now as far as I understand with the above, while I need to abide by data protection rules - I don't need to formally register with them as the data is collected by the business to use within the business. (Hopefully I'm right here)


Ok my next question is; it's been advised to me to run some competitions as a way to capture email addresses for marketing. I.e. Here's a competition to win a free xxxxx from my shop.... Just submit your email address to enter

In this situation again I'd be collecting emails for only use within my business for my business purposes of marketing - I'd never be selling them on - but because they haven't bought off me does the change the requirements on data protection? Do I need to formally register now? Or is it still classed as internal related and thus I just need to abide by the general rules??

Also what would I need to state on a competition post - would I need small print of "by submitting your email you agree to receive emails of interest from TLMartin Ltd"

Obviously the email marketing system I'm considering using would allow the user to easily unsubscribe by a single click

Is there anything extra I need to consider here? I don't want to be caught doing a whupsy ??

Thanks again in advance

Tris

 

[Graham Tyers]

The technical test is: "Will they be expecting to get your marketing email from you?".

Doing a competition to gather email addresses is fine, but (in the strict reading of PECR) even if you put the "by submitting ..." bit in the small print you're still not covered as the man on the clapham omnibus would presume they're entering a competition and not asking for email newsletters.

Having said that - anyone who completes your competition entry and then receives your marketing material as a result, is hardly likely to complain or be upset, and if you're not doing a spammy "Enter a competition to win a free iPhone", and the competition is clearly branded as yours for a related product, you'll be OK.

If you're really worried, you'd be safest with a ( by default ) unchecked opt-in box that the user has to check to opt-in to your marketing, but that'll

a) reduce your subs by 90%
b) mean all the angry people who don't read what's in front of them will check it, thinking its an opt-out and then complain!

So, In this scenario I'd be happy, myself, running a competition and making sure the mention of opt-in is fairly prominent ( like your suggestion ) close to the submit button, and miss out an opt-in or opt-out box altogether. A "click here to opt-out" has been thoroughly debunked as a get-out-of-jail card.

Someone who buys from you would reasonably expect material coming from you in future, so obviously subscribe anyone who buys.

Make sure you capture IP addresses as a precaution.

Personally I'd spend the £35 and get a Data Protection Registration no. anyway. You can use that as an icon on your mailing to show you care. It will improve response rates.

 

[Graham Tyers]

I should have added that if you're really really worried, you'd be safest of all emailing all the respondents and asking them to click to subscribe on that email, and only sub the people who do that. That'd leave you with virtually no subscribers of course.
The cosy feeling of being uber-compliant is great, but it doesn't pay the bills!

 

[RyanTrustSpot]

In my opinion if you really want to do justice for your users and appear as less-spammy as possible, you should always have the box UNCHECKED by default. I would hate to receive spam emails for every single site I purchased on, which is why I appreciate it whenever the box is unchecked. This way when the user DOES check the box you know they are actually interested in getting your content.. versus just assuming they want to get it because it was checked by default.

By having a list of people who actually want your content, you can ensure that you'll have a much more active / engaged audience.

 

[TLMartin]

Hi

well it was more of making sure I wasn't blatantly doing something wrong... as any email I send would have an unsubscribe link, which if they were really bothered they could click

From what I see most places seem to send out new product emails when you buy... using opt out. and I mean big companies like Amazon, ToysRUs, Smythes etc

But also I see lots of free competitions... we all know there is no such thing as free... which all are used to capture email addresses. I've seen photo booths to capture emails etc....

In fact it was even recommended here to do a giveaway to boost the people I can market too

At the moment may goal is a huge raise of awareness of myself.

The main thing I just want to be sure of is there wasn't a clear thing that these other places already doing this have done, that I didn't know about and thus not do.

Most of the time my products beat Amazon's prices... but unless a person uses google to search for a product I stock they wont find me.... and most people just seem to go straight to Amazon or eBay as first place and search there assuming they are the cheapest.

 

[TLMartin]

Make sure you capture IP addresses as a precaution.

Personally I'd spend the £35 and get a Data Protection Registration no. anyway. You can use that as an icon on your mailing to show you care. It will improve response rates.

Why the IP as a precaution?

What benefit does registering with ICO give me apart from a logo?

 

[TLMartin]

The technical test is: "Will they be expecting to get your marketing email from you?".

Doing a competition to gather email addresses is fine, but (in the strict reading of PECR) even if you put the "by submitting ..." bit in the small print you're still not covered as the man on the clapham omnibus would presume they're entering a competition and not asking for email newsletters.

Having said that - anyone who completes your competition entry and then receives your marketing material as a result, is hardly likely to complain or be upset, and if you're not doing a spammy "Enter a competition to win a free iPhone", and the competition is clearly branded as yours for a related product, you'll be OK.

I was planning on using one of the competition services like gleam.io which does a ticket based entry into the competition, and you get a number of tickets for submitting email, for liking the fb page, for following on twitter etc

So it will be quite blatant they have submitted, in order to increase chances to win

This was a recommended service and I've seen lots of other small businesses use this to capture marketting

 

[Graham Tyers]

Why the IP as a precaution?

What benefit does registering with ICO give me apart from a logo?

If someone was to raise a complaint, having the IP address, date and time shows that you were relying on data submitted on your form, and not just spamming and claiming that that was the case.

The ico registration demonstrates that you understand the obligations and rules of the DPA.

 

[Graham Tyers]

I was planning on using one of the competition services like gleam.io which does a ticket based entry into the competition, and you get a number of tickets for submitting email, for liking the fb page, for following on twitter etc

So it will be quite blatant they have submitted, in order to increase chances to win

This was a recommended service and I've seen lots of other small businesses use this to capture marketting

I agree. It's quite normal and reasonable to collect subscription this way. And from a business point of view it works well and it is understood and accepted by customers.

 

[PaulBappoo]

The important thing about building a list, is to make sure that the people on it actually want to receive the information that you are sending, otherwise there is absolutely no point them being on there. If you are selling new cars and you have 50,000 8 year old girls who love Barbie dolls on your list, it's not going to be worth your while. The trick to getting interested parties is to ensure your competition appeals to the sort of person you are looking for, but more than that offer something in addition to the competition prize, such as some information that the visitor can subscribe to receive. So long as the relevance is there, then your subscribers will be happy and so will you.