GDPR in Marketing

GDPR stands for General Data Protection Regulation, which is a privacy and security law that forces organisations to follow a few requirements, regarding the gathering, processing and the using of personal data from any individuals in the European Union (EU). 
According to Frankenfield, J. (2019), GDPR can be defined as "a legal framework for laws that set directions for the gathering and handling of personal data from the European Union (EU) residents". 

Moreover, it applies to any business that is only handling EU individuals' personal information, regardless of their location. In other words, despite the websites not being based in the EU, they still must follow all the obligations that GDPR demands, as the company is attracting European visitors, even if they do not actually market merchandise or services to EU residents.

Adopted in 2016, whereas only effected in May 2018, GDPR is actually considered the World's strongest set of data protection rules, which improve how people can access information about themselves and set boundaries on what organisations can do with personal information. 

What Does GDPR Mean for the Marketing Industry?

For marketers, particularly, the regulation impacts how companies keep track of and how they communicate with their customers. Therefore, they must be aware of all GDPR obligations regarding how companies must collect, process, and delete customer data as they mostly need to keep an eye on data permission, data access and data focus. In practice, on a daily basis, GDPR protects consumers from having their personal data monitored on the Internet. This basically means that for a European customer have their personal data attainable for gathering and tracking, specific measures should be taken to give consent. In order to protect consumers’ privacy and give them greater control over how their data is collected and used, GDPR requires marketers to secure explicit permission for data-use activities within the EU. Ghosh, D. (2018).

Additionally, GDPR establishes a few key concepts for the lawful handling of personal data, which includes the collection, structuring, storage, consultation, use, combination, restriction and destruction of personal information. They are: 

• Lawfulness, fairness and transparency
• Purpose limitation
• Data minimisation
• Accuracy
• Storage limitation
• Integrity and confidentiality (security)
• Accountability

References

Ghosh, D., 2018. How GDPR will transform digital marketing. Harvard Business Review Digital Articles, pp.2-4.

MacDonald, S., 2018. GDPR for Marketing: The Definitive Guide for 2018. Retrieved June, 5, p.2018.

Insights, S., 2018. Implications of the GDPR for marketing in UK and Europe.

Investopedia. 2020. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). [online] Available at: <https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr.asp> [Accessed 20 June 2020].

Blog.hubspot.com. 2020. 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 20 June 2020].

Uhi.ac.uk. 2020. Data Protection - The Seven Principles. [online] Available at: <https://www.uhi.ac.uk/en/about-uhi/governance/policies-and-regulations/data-protection/the-seven-principles/> [Accessed 20 June 2020].