The Rules for Direct Marketing & eMail Marketing in the UK

Despite all the publicity generated by the introduction of GDPR, there is still a lot of confusion over the rules for using mailing lists and email lists for direct marketing in the UK. This brief guide aims to dispel a few myths and clarify what marketers can and cannot do in the post-GDPR UK.

Business-to-business marketing: the marketing of business services or business products to people at work.

Emails
You can send promotional emails to corporate email addresses. This includes personal corporate email addresses e.g. John.Smith@BigCompany.co.uk. You do not need consent or opt-ins to be able to do this. You should offer a way for individuals to opt out of receiving further emails from you. If an individual opts out you should not contact that person again.

Post
You can send promotional mail to individuals at companies and other corporate bodies. Individual employees can opt out of receiving mail from you.

Telemarketing
You can make live sales and marketing calls to companies that have not registered their phone number on the Corporate Telephone Preference Service (CTPS). You can check whether a number is registered on the CTPS for free here https://www.electricmarketing.co.uk/ctpschecker/

You must have specific consent to make marketing calls about claims management services. You need specific consent to make recorded marketing calls to any phone number.

Consumer marketing: the marketing of products and services to people in their homes or on personal numbers or to personal email addresses. This also applies to marketing to sole traders and partnerships.

Emails
You must have specific consent to send promotional emails to personal email addresses. However you may send emails about similar products to your previous customers as long as they have been given the chance to opt out.

Post
You can send promotional mail to people in their homes as long as the names and addresses have been obtained fairly. Individuals can opt out of receiving mail from you.

Telemarketing
You can make live sales and marketing calls to numbers that have not been registered with the Telephone Preference Service. People can opt out of receiving calls from you. You must have specific consent to make marketing calls about claims management services or pension schemes. You need specific consent to make recorded marketing calls to any phone number.

Texts
You must have specific consent to send promotional texts to personal numbers. However you may send texts about similar products to your previous customers as long as they have been given the chance to opt out.

The Information Commissioner’s Office is responsible for the regulation of data protection, freedom of information and privacy and electronic communications in the UK. The ICO’s guide to direct marketing can be seen here: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/marketing/

Trigger Marketing for B2B Marketers: Tie Your Marketing Communications Into Key Events In A Company’s Life

As anyone who has ever done cold-calling and appointment setting will tell you, it is difficult to penetrate the mind-set of ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. How can you sell into a company which is embedded with another supplier?  Sometimes you just get lucky and your cold call hits the buyer when there is trouble with the existing supplier – a price rise, a delayed job – and the buyer is in the mood to make a change.

You can increase your new business success rate by contacting companies when they are likely to be hiring new suppliers.

We’ve identified a company merger or acquisition as being a key moment in a corporate’s life for hiring new suppliers.

When a company buys or merges with another company, it triggers a change in its purchasing habits. It may buy in services to help it cope with the challenge of merging or absorbing the new corporation. The company may not have all the experience it needs to deal with new issues the merger is throwing up. This is when it looks to outsource and when, by being in the right place at the right time, you can win business.

As well as being timely, you can make your communication relevant to the prospect. You can grab their interest in the first line by talking about their company’s situation. Instead of presenting your excellent credentials, you can explain how your company’s expertise can help them; either by removing a problem from their in-tray or by taking their business forward.

Electric Marketing tracks merger and acquisition activity in M&A News. M&A News isn’t just a list of mergers and acquisitions; it gives you contact details for the key personnel in the companies involved so that you can make your pitch at a time when the company is in a state of flux and momentous change.

M&A News focuses on the people who are likely to be buying in services: chief executive, marketing director, HR director, finance director, IT director and legal director. At just £145 for 12 datafiles, one every month for a year, it is the cheapest information for trigger marketing campaigns available. See M&A News for details.

There’s more about trigger marketing on Electric Marketing’s website

Should I Buy An Email List? | When Buying an Email List is the Right Thing For Your Company

It is not hard to find a business which has had a bad experience of buying an email list. And there are plenty of bloggers who preach building your own email list organically by getting people to sign up on your website. This is good eMarketing practice but building a sizeable list of clients, prospects and interested parties can take years.

If you aren’t sure whether buying an email list is right for your company, ask yourself if your business fits into any of these categories.

Your business is a new start up with a handful of happy customers and you want to find more customers. Quickly.

Your business is an established business which has surplus stock or unexpected spare capacity to take on new work.

Your business is looking at expanding into new markets eg a conference company runs events on HR issues is moving sideways into conferences on health & safety. The company sells places at the new conference to its existing client base of HR managers and wants to tell health & safety managers about the conference too. The company buys list of email addresses of health and safety managers.

Your business has ambitious growth targets and wants to expand. Companies which use email marketing lists include Google, IBM, HP, Oracle, Dell, Fujitsu.

Email lists and mailing lists are essential for businesses which want to attract new customers. For a small business or a start up, email marketing is the cheapest way to tell more people about your business.

You need not buy a million email addresses and overload yourself and your email server. Email marketing, like direct marketing* can be done in small, manageable chunks. A good email list provider will not insist that you buy the entire list at once. You can start out with a campaign to 500 or 1,000 email addresses. Take it steady while you learn what sort of emails work for your business and your marketplace.

If you have not bought email lists before, read our handy guide to the basics of sourcing an email list from a reliable company and avoiding the email list cowboys.

 

 

*for younger readers, direct marketing was widely practised in the last century and involved marketing using leaflets, envelopes and postage stamps.