Since it came into force in 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has been one of the most significant pieces of privacy legislation affecting UK businesses. While it covers every aspect of handling personal data, it’s particularly relevant to marketing teams, especially those running email campaigns.
If you send marketing emails. whether to consumers or other businesses, understanding how GDPR and legitimate interest work is essential for both legal compliance and customer trust.
What is GDPR?
GDPR is a regulation that governs how organisations collect, process, store, and use personal data. In the UK, it’s now known as the UK GDPR, which works alongside the Data Protection Act 2018. It applies to all businesses handling personal data, regardless of size, and covers everything from storing customer names to tracking website visitors. It was originally an EU regulation.
At its core, GDPR is about transparency, accountability, and giving individuals control over their data. For marketers, this means ensuring you have a lawful basis for contacting someone and that you handle their data securely and ethically.
GDPR compliance UK: the key principles
Achieving GDPR compliance in the UK means meeting seven key principles:
- Lawfulness, fairness, and transparency: You must be clear about why and how you process data.
- Purpose limitation: Only use data for the reason it was collected.
- Data minimisation: Don’t collect more information than you need.
- Accuracy: Keep your records up to date.
- Storage limitation: Don’t keep personal data longer than necessary.
- Integrity and confidentiality: Protect data from loss, damage, or unauthorised access.
- Accountability: Be able to demonstrate compliance with all of the above.
For email marketing, the most important step is having a lawful basis for sending messages, and that’s where legitimate interests in GDPR often comes into play.
GDPR and legitimate interest
GDPR recognises six lawful bases for processing personal data: consent, contract, legal obligation, vital interests, public task, and legitimate interests.
Legitimate interest is particularly relevant for business-to-business (B2B) marketing. It allows you to process someone’s data without explicit consent if:
- You have a valid reason to contact them.
- It does not override their rights or freedoms.
- They would reasonably expect to hear from you.
For example, contacting a finance director about a new accounting tool may fall under legitimate interest if it relates to the sender’s business purpose. However, you must still provide an easy way for recipients to opt out of future messages.
Legitimate interests GDPR: how to use it correctly
If you choose to rely on legitimate interest for your email marketing, you need to complete a Legitimate Interests Assessment (LIA). This involves:
- Identifying your interest: What’s the purpose of your communication?
- Assessing necessity: Is this the least intrusive way to achieve your purpose?
- Balancing rights: Does your interest outweigh the individual’s right to privacy?
This assessment should be documented so you can demonstrate compliance if challenged.
GDPR and email marketing
Whether you’re relying on consent or legitimate interest, GDPR affects how you collect and use email addresses. Some best practices include:
- Only emailing people who have opted in or where a legitimate interest can be clearly demonstrated.
- Being transparent about what recipients can expect when they sign up.
- Providing a clear and easy way to unsubscribe in every message.
- Keeping accurate, up-to-date contact lists to avoid sending emails to people who have opted out.
Not only do these steps keep you compliant but they also help you maintain a positive sender reputation, which improves deliverability and keeps your emails out of junk folders.
Why GDPR is good for marketers
While some see GDPR as restrictive, it can actually help improve marketing performance. By ensuring you only contact people who want to hear from you (or have a reasonable expectation to), you’re more likely to see:
- Higher open and click-through rates.
- Lower unsubscribe and complaint rates.
- Better engagement and conversions.
In short, GDPR encourages quality over quantity, which can be a win for both marketers and recipients.
GDPR is a non-negotiable
GDPR isn’t just a legal requirement, it’s a framework that can help businesses build trust and maintain strong relationships with their audience.
Whether you rely on consent or legitimate interests, the key to GDPR compliance in the UK is transparency, respect for individual rights, and responsible data handling. For email marketing, that means sending relevant, expected, and welcome messages, the kind that get opened and acted upon, not marked as spam.
If you’re looking for a partner to help with your campaign and make sure it’s all compliant with legislation and existing regulations, get in touch with the Integra team by filling in the form at the bottom of the page.