We’ve had the GDPR now get ready for the EPR, The E-Privacy Regulations; Europe’s follow up to the General Data Protection Regulation. It was stated that this new law was necessary to ensure ePrivacy rules are consistent with GDPR so this set of further regulations go from ‘General’ (data across all formats, both physical and digital) to specific (just digital data) so that means the areas of unsolicited marketing, Cookies and Confidentiality are covered in a more specific context.

The regulations now include any type of promotional communications, including emails and text messages, to be explicitly consented to by the receiver before the send. Marketers will not be able to send emails or text without prior permission from each email or mobile account holder.

But do not worry! The likelihood is that nothing will majorly change it is simply a tightening up of any loopholes in the GDPR in relation to digital communication.

For us at Voodoo SMS and our customers, this won’t mean much, as we are already compliant in regards to this and you will have likely already gathered the consent from your customers to send them traffic. It’s always handy to remember that this is all in regards to promotional content, transactional traffic such as order updates are being left untouched.

Currently, marketers are able to contact existing customers promotional messages over email and SMS if the products and services you are marketing are similar to what the person has purchased previously, otherwise known as a “soft” opt-in.

With the new regulations, you will still be able to do this but the regulations place a time limit of 12 months upon it. This time limit is, however, arbitrary as the length of time between contact is dependent upon the context and what product or service someone bought. Some products with long life cycles where it may make sense to first make contact 12 months or later (you wouldn’t expect a sofa company to send you deals on new sofas 3 months after you bought a new one).

The outlines of the E-Privacy Regulations can be found online, however, please be aware that they are not fully finalised yet and are subject to change. We will keep you updated regularly.

For up-to-date news and updates on the EPR follow us on social media and keep an eye out for further blog posts and updates!