Email Marketing is not Dead. 99% of people check their email whether corporate or personal, every day. In fact, lots of organizations and entrepreneurs have email newsletters these days, but some if not most of them are forgetting the Data Privacy Law or Data Protection Act by simply using the TO or CC (carbon copy) field in their email software to send their newsletters.

The Data Protection Act or Data Privacy Law is a law that seeks to safeguard all types of information, be it private, personal, or sensitive. It is meant to hide both natural and juridical persons involved within the processing of private information. It stipulates that you just must take all sensible measures to make sure the info you carry, like people’s email addresses, aren’t divulged to 3rd parties unless they have given you the permission.

By handing you their personal information like email address, people are trusting that you simply will handle it safely and not allow spammers to own access thereto. However, sending them an email blast, or email newsletter, using the TO or CC field, where every recipient can see every other recipient’s email address, this can be a breach of the Data Protection Act or Data Privacy Law.

More often than not, this practice of unmasked emails may not cause a problem since most people neglect or overlooked and do not realize that having their email address openly dispatched across multiple recipients and computers significantly increases the opportunities for spammers and viruses.

If you have been doing this and lucky enough that have not received serious complaints from using the TO or CC field, better to stop now and practice Data Protection or Data Privacy compliance.

So, how to be compliant and What’s next?

It is part of our jobs as marketers to send email blasts and newsletters, but you do not want to risk in receiving a serious complaint from your recipients. 

The good news, your emails can be sent to multiple recipients using the BCC (blind carbon copy) and works the same thing as the CC field, but your recipients will never have visibility of the other recipients, which makes you safe from divulging people’s email addresses.

Does this make you compliant to the Data Protection or Data Privacy? Not yet, because you must make sure that your recipients agreed or gave you the permission to send them promotional emails before doing so. Do not forget that all emails must have the opt-out option for your recipients to unsubscribe.

Is that it? Well, Yes… but, there are better ways of doing email campaigns.

You can send your email campaigns to those who are genuinely interested in your marketing messages and ensure that email campaigns are compliant with the law using email marketing software.

Do you really need an email marketing software? What’s in it for you?

• Most email marketing software will give you the flexibility and ease of designing your emails with templates. This feature will help you execute a better look and feel and avoid a poorly designed email.
• When we talk about the design, it also includes the mobile-friendly design. Emails that are not mobile-friendly will give a poor user experience that will probably result in high bounce rates. We are considering mobile-friendly design since we are now in the mobile now generation.
• Another important advantage of having an email marketing software is personalization. Personalizing emails, messages and headlines makes readers feel connected to what is being sold. Email marketing software offers personalized greetings and headlines with the name of the recipient with out you manually doing it.
• Email marketing software also makes you Data Protection or Data Privacy compliant. The recipients may opt-in to emails they would like to receive from you which means your email blasts, newsletters and campaigns will only be sent to recipients who are actually interested in your offerings and messages. In the same way, they may opt-out or unsubscribe anytime.
• With the help of email marketing software, you can break down and understand the behavior of your email subscribers to fill in the gaps to find out where to improve and what to focus on for the next marketing email. Metrics aside from bounce rates are available, like click through, Who, when and how long did they opened and read your email as well as what links were clicked.
• Lastly, with the help of the above-mentioned advantages you will be able to have a targeted audience and message that will work together for you get conversion and ROI for your campaigns.

Email marketing Software Options

• HubSpot Email Marketing
• Active Campaign
• Benchmark Email
• Campaign Monitor
• Mailchimp
• MailerLite
• Mailjet
• Moosend
• SendPulse
• Sender
• Sendinblue
• Omnisend

Whether you choose to use an email marketing software or use your office or personal email, this guidance still applies to all emails that you deliver. Ensure that you have the permission, explicitly or implicitly, to divulge or to send email to the people on your list.

Happy Blasting!