Email Marketing with new GDPR Act

[Lewis-Hayward]

I have started a new event advertising company and am now in the process of starting a marketing plan. My first intentions was to email around local event managers / businesses to advertise the website and offer a discount on new customers.

My main concern is, with the new GDPR Act, would this be against the new rules and potentially breaking the law?

I would be finding their emails online via Google so i would not be purchasing the email addresses, however they would not be signing up to the email distribution (although it would only be 1 email and not saved in a mailing list and harassed).

How do people advertise using emails at the moment?

 

[fisicx]

You can send a marketing email to mail@ or office@ but not to john.smith@

However, I think your marketing plan is doomed from the start. Offering a discount isn't an incentive. You need to demonstrate that your advertising methods work. Show them that you can bring in the punters to their events. Why is your advertising any better than the existing channels? What do you do differently?

 

[LukeF]

You can send a marketing email to mail@ or office@ but not to john.smith@

However, I think your marketing plan is doomed from the start. Offering a discount isn't an incentive. You need to demonstrate that your advertising methods work. Show them that you can bring in the punters to their events. Why is your advertising any better than the existing channels? What do you do differently?

I thought you could send it to any email as long as you told them why you're emailing and gave them an easy way to opt out from any further communication?

I was under the assumption that GDPR was about data protection rather than cold emailing (could be wrong!). Any clarification for myself on this would be appreciated too.

 

[Mark T Jones]

Contrary to popular belief you can email a named individual at a corporate address ( [email protected] )- but you must give and respond to unsubscribe options.

 

[Mark Laurie]

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1suwozzsrd5c3vjWXI3BJ9mgd8TSKouCg/view

 

[Alan]

however they would not be signing up to the email distribution (although it would only be 1 email and not saved in a mailing list and harassed).

In fact, you are better off the keep a record of the email address so you don't accidentally contact them again, if you only intend to contact them once.

 

[Martins-Adwords-Solutions]

It would be better to call them. Years ago i got in hands so called scenario from a German marketing company. They got it all figured out and in this scenario all the answers are foreseen. For instance: if the customer says this, say that, if he answers this, stop trying if that go on and say ...

So I assume that contacting potential customers by phone is the most effective way to gain new clients.