How is the B2B market affected?
With all the discussion around the incoming GDPR regulation and its impact on how companies, both large and small, communicate with their customers and prospects, we were curious as to how the regulation will impact us, as a small business operating within the B2B space.
We’ve seen a lot of companies trying to tell you how to prepare for GDPR over the last few months, and there’s a lot of scaremongering out there. With the Regulation still being finessed (the latest draft is available to view online), so we believe it’s not possible to be 100% sure what will be required to be fully GDPR compliant in 2018. Of the information that is available, it is often sent out as a catchall leading to chargeable consultancy and advice. However, a lot of the focus is actually on the B2C arena and how customer data is collected, stored and used: there’s a fair amount of ambiguity as to how exactly companies within the B2B space need to respond to GDPR, and whether it will affect us at all.
When the details of GDPR began to be revealed, many B2B marketers believed that the regulations would not apply to them as corporate data was not specifically mentioned, and their data handling, collection and governance was covered under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR). However, it is now clear that PECR will be superseded by GDPR – especially around the issue of opt ins and the collection of data for communication purposes.
We’ve put together 4 key things that companies working in the B2B space need to know about GDPR:
- GDPR covers more than just phone calls, email marketing and SMS – it stretches the application of the existing Data Privacy Regulation across social media messaging, instant messaging, VOIP, webmail and the Internet of Things (IoT).
- Corporate data (such as business email addresses) are currently believed to still require an opt-out option, rather than the opt-in or double opt-in being required, as is necessary for companies handing personal data from May 25 2018.
- However, the difference between PECR and GDPR, is that PECR allows soft opt-in during ‘negotiations of a sale’, whereas GDPR becomes tighter on the purpose of communication, demanding that email contact is limited to ‘the context of the sale of a product or service’. You need to make sure that the reason for contacting your database is contextual and relevant.
- Most importantly, it’s key to remember that until the final regulation is published in Decmeber 2017, it’s difficult to predict exactly how it will impact those operating in B2B, so whilst it’s important to be compliant with existing data regulations, try not to buy into expensive GDPR compliance programmes as they’re all based on interpretations of the draft guidelines, and may not even be relevant to B2B.
We’ve found the information from the following sources useful in our research, and you might too:
https://www.bluesheep.com/blog/how-will-gdpr-affect-b2b-marketers
https://upfrontbusinessdevelopment.co.uk/gdpr-legislation-means-b2b-marketing/
https://kingpincomms.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Kingpin_GDPR-eBook-20172-002.pdf
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER
We are doing these blogs to help small businesses like ourselves understand this new and complex legislation, and protect against some of the unneccessary money-making activities that are surrounding it. We need to make clear that this is not legal advice and is only our interpretation of what we have read. You need to make your own decisions about how you approach and implement your GDPR compliance. We take no responsibility for any issues or fines that arise from you making decisions based on the information we provide on GDPR. Hopefully the links we have sent will allow you to make your decisions with a little less pressure from the scaremongers.