When it comes to targeting customers, marketers have to be up on privacy regulations and what specific ramifications they have for the businesses they represent. Some privacy regulations will have an impact on companies, but others are free to operate as usual. Adam Robinson, Co-Founder/CEO of GetEmails shared insight into the whys and hows of marketing going forward.
CCPA and GDPR are not the same
While the CCPA has been billed as the American equivalent of the EU’s GDPR with an impact on all businesses connected to California, that is a false equivalency, Robinson insists. One of the ways people get it wrong is because they are unaware of the minimum requirements to be subject to CCPA.
Aside from having the business located in California or selling to residents in California, only a business that has annual gross revenues of at least $25 million is subject to the regulation, which leaves many small and even medium-sized businesses in the clear. The same income threshold does not apply to the GDPR.
But the real confusion is due to a kind of assumption that if GDPR is more stringent than what was in place, and the CCPA is also stricter than what was in place, that means that it has an impact on email marketing.
More from PostFunnel on GDPR:
Getting On Board For Data Privacy Legislation
GDPR Six Months Later: What Have We Learned So Far?
Gearing Up Towards The Dreadful GDPR
Ready or Not CCPA is Here (And You’re Probably Not)
The Price of Privacy
While GDPR did put in requirements to get informed consent, including opt-in for emails from customers, the fact is that the CCPA “doesn’t address opt-in email marketing in any way, shape or form.”
What the CCPA does address is customer data collection. It requires full disclosure to the consumer about what data is collected and what is done with it, who gets the data outside the company, etc. It also requires “setting up an infrastructure so that they can see the data and remove themselves from the database.”
That still doesn’t make it nearly as comprehensive in terms of consumer privacy as the GDPR is. Robinson sums it up this way: “ GDPR is like CCPA plus all of the stuff related to email,” covered in the CAN-SPAM Act, “and applies to everybody.”
A look at CAN-SPAM
Privacy protection center on email marketing in the United State applies nationwide and predates the CCPA. Marketers who want to keep on the right side of the law and avoid the fines that can go up to $43,280 have to be sure to adhere to the CAN-SPAM Act. Its seven primary requirements are as follows:
- Don’t use false or misleading header information
- Don’t use deceptive subject lines
- Identify the message as an ad
- Tell recipients where you’re located
- Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future email from you
- Honor opt-out requests promptly
- Monitor what others are doing on your behalf
The opt-out allowed here is for receiving communication that is not of interest to you, which is quite different from the CCPA’s offer to opt-out of data collection.
CCPA doesn’t stop Google from knowing all about you
That is because a great deal of information on people is already constantly uploaded through Google, Amazon, Facebook, and other major tech players. He has written a blog post entitled Permission Shmarketing!
That blog references a very large list of things that Google monitors. Here’s what Google can access and monetize*:
- Your camera and microphone, at any point
- Every photo or video you’ve ever taken; processed with AI
- Every physical place you’ve ever been and will ever go
- Every search you’ve ever run and/or deleted
- An advertising profile about you
- Every app or extension you’ve ever used, when and how often you use them, and who you communicate on them with
- Your entire YouTube history
- Your bookmarks
- Your emails
- Your contacts
- Your entire Google Drive
- Photos you’ve taken on your phone
- Businesses you’ve purchased from
- Music you listen to
- Your calendar
- Your Hangout sessions
- Websites you’ve created
- Phones you have owned
- Pages you’ve shared
- Phone calls you’ve made
- Messages left for you
- How many steps you take in a day
“Most people don’t realize that list of things on Google.” While some may “freak out about it,” what he sees of the younger generation is that they just shrug it off. Expectations about privacy have shifted as a result of seeing surveillance capitalism as a given.
Accordingly, just about anyone born into the technologically driven reality of surveillance capitalism has no expectations of privacy. “They accept the fact that they are living in a surveillance state primarily controlled by four major companies.”
He points out that Google doesn’t need to wait on opt-in to capitalize on what it learns about you. As he mentioned in his blog, “Gmail serves you ads in your Gmail inbox based on your web browsing history and other activity, while you’re signed into Google. Check out how they target here.”
The EBR approach
Robinson argues that other companies should be able to use that capability, as well. That’s why his company offers what is called Email-Based Retargeting (EBR). It works as follows:
“When a user hits a page of your website, we use cookies and cross-device ID to match that user to a 3rd party opt-in, and pass you an email address, first name, last name, postal record, and the landing page the user landed on.”
True, you can’t legally do that with customers covered by the GDPR. However, it does not violate CAN-SPAM, which makes it a viable approach in the United States.
The future of email marketing
As for the future of email marketing, Robinson admits the possibility of new regulations kicking in that will require opt-in on the customer side: “We will see what advances the US makes on the nationwide front with respect to opt-in email marketing.”
Nevertheless, he does believe it will remain a viable communication tool for the future. Despite the fact that “people love to call the end of email, I believe there will always be a place for a not-immediate, well-organized, easily searchable messaging protocol like email.”
That doesn’t mean he believes it will not change. He anticipates an evolution in which emails achieve a one-to-one level of communication as they become “increasingly personalized” and “triggered-by-behavior.” His own company does website visitor identification to enable them to use email for retargeting.
That capability, he believes will not be curtailed in future and would extend marketing communication to sending out “triggered, personalized emails that will be considered ‘wanted,’ or ‘welcome,’ even to people who have not subscribed to an email list.
Emails will be less about selling, though, he believes, and more about relationship-building. He explained: “Mandatory first-party opt-ins to consumers and business emails would effectively eliminate your ability to prospect with the channel, and turn it into a nurturing, conversion, and retention tool.”
As such, email will also be an effective medium for building connection with your customers.