GDPR - Don’t confuse service messages with marketing messages
Knowing the difference between a marketing message and a service message is vital to ensuring your business stays on the right side of the GDPR and the ePrivacy Regulations, writes Emma Ritchie of KPMG Law
For almost every business, good customer service and proactive marketing are part and parcel of daily activity. However, there’s every possibility that your business could unwittingly be in breach of the data protection rules. So how do you ensure that your direct marketing communications are compliant with these rules? Importantly, do you and your team understand and know the difference between marketing messages and services messages, and why the distinction is important for your business?
A service message is a communication sent to individuals solely for administrative or customer service purposes. They usually contain information such as acknowledgements or confirmations of appointments and purchases, or information related to changes to an existing service or contract. A marketing message, in contrast, is any message that contains advertising or promotional material and is directed to an individual. Significantly, supervisory authorities across the EU have taken a broad approach to what constitutes a marketing message.
WALKING THE TIGHTROPE
Most times the difference between a marketing message and a service message is obvious. An acknowledgement of a recent purchase is a service message, while an offer or link to a company’s latest offers or newest products is a marketing message. However, sometimes it’s not so clear-cut. For example, a message informing customers of a change to an existing contract may fall foul of the data protection rules if it includes a link to a company website or has any mention of a company’s aims or ideals.
Furthermore, even where a communication to an individual has multiple purposes, and only one of those purposes is the promotion of a product or service, the message is still deemed to be a marketing message, and, as such must be compliant with the data protection rules.
Because of the exposure to potential monetary and reputational consequences that can result from a miscategorisation of a marketing message as a service message, we recommend that executives responsible for sales, marketing and customer care undertake a comprehensive review in relation to mass communications prior to pressing the send button.
Quite often this will be more than one person, so make sure that you appoint someone with overall responsibility for compliance who can share both the message that compliance is a priority and that all communications need to be reviewed for adherence to the data protection rules. If you don’t have the expertise in-house, it makes sense to get in touch with professionals who can help ensure compliance with the data protection rules in respect of service messages, including how to differentiate between a service message and a marketing message.
This will also help ensure your business has the correct legal basis for communicating with individuals and is putting in place internal marketing guidelines in this regard for your sales force.
HOW KPMG LAW CAN HELP
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