Let’s be honest, nobody wakes up excited to read about GDPR.

It sounds like one of those soul-draining regulations made by a group of grumpy, bearded men in a dimly lit room, plotting ways to make online marketing harder.

But here’s the real deal: GDPR isn’t here to ruin your business. It’s here to stop those annoying spam calls, dodgy emails, and creepy messages from companies you’ve never even heard of.

And guess what? If you’re already running a decent email marketing strategy, you’re probably following most of the GDPR rules without even realising it.

So, let’s strip away the fluff and get into the seven simple steps to keep your email marketing GDPR compliant, without the stress.

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This is hands down the most predictable, plug-and-play way to double your earnings per email subscriber. It allows you to generate a consistent sales flow without launching another product, service, or offer. Best news yet? You won't have to rely on copywriting, slimy persuasion, NLP, or ‘better' subject lines.

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00:01.38

Kennedy Kennedy

How do you stay GDPR compliant without pulling your hair out, wanting to delete everything, throw your laptop out the window and go and get a job at the co-op instead? That's what going to talk about today. and we're going to get really, really practical. None of that theory stuff.

00:42.85

Kennedy Kennedy

Okay, so it does seem that like a bunch of years ago, a bunch of grumpy old blokes and white old beards decided sit in a room somewhere in Europe and make life really difficult for online creators like you and me.

00:57.59

Kennedy Kennedy

That's... the truth is that's not actually the case. See, this whole GDPR thing, and we're going to get really part of it. I'm going to give you some really simple steps. The good news is you're probably doing most of what needs to be done. Any little tweaks you need to make are simple, and you only need to do them one time. Oh, and before we go any further, I've got to say, because this is verging on like something that could be slightly legal.

01:18.49

Kennedy Kennedy

I'm not a lawyer. It's obviously not legal advice. i'm not qualified in anything. And these are just my opinions. But what they are is they're my opinions based on what I've asked my GDPR consultant.

01:29.01

Kennedy Kennedy

And I've taken her advice. And of course, this is my interpretation of advice. So I do recommend you do a bit of extra research just to be sure. But these are the general sort of practical tips. And there's going to be nuances around this. If you're in like a highly regulated industry, then obviously you're go to have to some specific rules there. But this is general advice based on the things we're implementing, the things we've implemented over the past five years of running this business, right?

01:51.07

Kennedy Kennedy

Oh, and by the way, There is one email strategy that has brought in more than 8,000 students into our business and millions of dollars. It's called the Fast and Forever email framework. It's really special and it works extremely well.

02:05.21

Kennedy Kennedy

And if you want to download that framework, you can go and do that right now at emailmarketingheroes.com. dot com slash Fast. Actually, it comes with a complete masterclass training on exactly how to use it, how to get the best results from it. So if you want to go and grab that, it's a cool one sheet, which shows the entire framework that I've used to bring in all of these more than 8,000 students right now.

02:27.16

Kennedy Kennedy

Just go to emailmarketingheroes.com slash fast slash fast emailmarketingheroes.com slash fast. Okay, so we're going to get into the details of this GDPR stuff, right?

02:38.91

Kennedy Kennedy

Here's the thing. GDPR was actually just written with Jews, just really briefly. It's not like a history lesson or anything like that, because yawn, i don't want that. But basically, to to stop us all from getting all those dodgy phone calls and texts and WhatsApps and those emails and all those letters that were coming through from people we never shared our information with.

02:55.72

Kennedy Kennedy

It's to protect us. That's what it's here for. And the main thing to say is it mostly affects and it's most brutal in its implementation When you are working B2C, if you're going directly to customers rather than businesses, the laws and the regulations are much tighter, but they're still okay.

03:14.28

Kennedy Kennedy

I mean, there's still lots and millions of businesses doing really well, even while conforming to GDPR. Because GDPR is not here to stop us from selling, to stop us from growing, to stop us from marketing.

03:24.95

Kennedy Kennedy

It's there to help us do it in a way where people are not distracted by loads of shit they didn't want from people who are being illegitimate. Right. So we're going to get into some really practical tips right now. And the good news is, like I said, you're probably doing most of it right.

03:38.35

Kennedy Kennedy

And anything you're not doing right is a really simple one time fix. So let's get into it. The first thing is. to tell people they're actually joining your email list. So you don't want to be just randomly adding people to your email list because you got their business card at a BNI networking meeting at four o'clock in the morning while you were being you know spat coffee on, right?

03:58.31

Kennedy Kennedy

It's not about grabbing people's data from LinkedIn or scraping it from the internet or wherever you get it from. What you want to be doing is putting a page up, and like most of us are, we're putting a page up that says, hey, do you want to join my email list?

04:10.95

Kennedy Kennedy

And if people are choosing to join your email list, then, hey, that gives you permission. If they're giving you permission, if you're saying on a page, hey, If you do you want this really cool thing, well, you get it as a bonus for free when you join my email list. Then they're putting their name and email address in. They're putting that information in.

04:30.63

Kennedy Kennedy

Then, hey, they're expecting your emails. OK, it's going to tell them on that page what they're going to receive. Right. And it tells them why you're asking for that information.

04:42.32

Kennedy Kennedy

right You've got to do that as part of this GDPR thing. But think about it. We're already doing most of this stuff. right So we're getting permission. We're saying, hey, want my email list? And to say yes, they enter their email address. They're entering it.

04:54.12

Kennedy Kennedy

Secondly, um it tells them what they're going to receive. Hey, you're going to receive my emails every week or every day or every 32 seconds or whatever it's going to be. and you're going to receive this other cool thing. And it tells them why you're asking for the information. it's because I want to email you the stuff. If you want to get my emails, you're join my email list. So that one's pretty straightforward. Like I said, you're probably doing it. Okay.

05:16.47

Kennedy Kennedy

But just make sure that you're doing all of these things. I don't want someone throwing the gavel at you and putting you in a little room to spend some time alone. and being very naughty. i don't want you doing that okay. Second board is use a proper email system. That's kind of the shortcut to this next thing.

05:29.46

Kennedy Kennedy

If you're using a proper email system, talking the mainstream systems that you're almost certainly already using, you're probably doing a lot of the stuff right because they help you to comply with these things. So if you're using ActiveCampaign, GHL, if you're using keep if you're using any of these major platforms that you've heard of, and I'm not going to list them all here, but you know, the main ones, then the good news is there's features built into those platforms, which help you to do the following things, which sound one, one, they they are really boring, but two, they also sound technical.

06:02.71

Kennedy Kennedy

The good news is these platforms are all already taking care of them for you. And the first one is to keep a record that you have someone's permission, their consent, they call it in the legal world, to actually send them emails and have their information. Well, the good news is when someone signed up to your email list, that platform is making a record that, hey, they entered their email and their information into this form.

06:26.88

Kennedy Kennedy

That's your record of consent, right? Secondly, you've got to make sure the data is is securely stored. Well, these platforms that are professional are securely storing that information by encrypting it at their end. It's not just stored so someone can look it up and have a read of it. It's being done in a way that is behind passwords and usernames and ID checks and all this sort of good stuff. So it's being stored in a secure way.

06:51.30

Kennedy Kennedy

And here's the really cool thing. When you use a professional email system, and this is one of the great changes that came up with GDPR, When you're using a professional email system, you are actually moving the responsibility for securing that data and storing it securely to that other company. You see, before GDPR, it was the other way around.

07:11.35

Kennedy Kennedy

If it's your company that the person's signing up for, then used to have the responsibility. Now it's the responsibility of the company who stores your email address.

07:22.16

Kennedy Kennedy

OK, so like in this case, if it's GHL that you use, it's their responsibility. So there problems there, it's them who are going to be taking the responsibility for that. And then the last piece of this is and this is going to be like this is embarrassingly simple.

07:35.60

Kennedy Kennedy

Make unsubscribing easy and it's automatic with most of these platforms. Right. So there's an unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email. You click it. You're out. Here's the way I think of this. Right. And I've still got a whole bunch of other things you need to do. So make sure you stay tuned. But for this one, the way that I think of it is, look, you are not abducting people.

07:55.04

Kennedy Kennedy

That means you are allowing them to choose to join your email list. You're not pulling them in and saying, you're with us now. you're not abducting people. And you are not holding them hostage. You're not saying you can't get out. You've got an unsubscribe link at the bottom of every email and they can leave.

08:10.06

Kennedy Kennedy

If you've got those two things in place, I think for the most part, for most of our situations, we're doing a really bloody good job. the next one is limit access across your business there are people who do not need to be able to look at the contacts and personal information of the people who are your subscribers like your graphic designer doesn't need to be able to look up mary's email address and phone number and address so if in your business and this does happen every now and again one of the things you do when you bring on a new team member is you just blast a thing out which gives them access to everything just in case they need it you probably want to change that and

08:46.19

Kennedy Kennedy

Only people who need access to you the information should have access to it. Next, and number four, is you want to remove disengaged people. When people are not looking at your emails, they're not reading them, they're actually depleting their permission that they that they give you that they give you ah that's not a word but they gave you once upon a time.

09:08.15

Kennedy Kennedy

So back in the day, a few months ago, they might have said, yes, i want to get your emails. They're no longer opening your emails now, though. So that permission is kind of dwindling. It's kind of getting diluted.

09:19.04

Kennedy Kennedy

So again, not only is it good to get rid of disengaged people because it improves your deliverability. It's better because you don't have to pay as much to store these people. But also it helps you be a bit more compliant. There's a whole bunch of reasons to get rid of disengaged people who are not opening and clicking on your emails.

09:34.78

Kennedy Kennedy

Number five is be careful with your AI tools. We have to be careful of this, right? We're using AI in lots of different ways in our businesses, sometimes to write emails or to write stuff, but also, and this is the big one, to analyze information.

09:47.52

Kennedy Kennedy

If you're taking a bunch of subscriber information and you're putting it into an AI tool to analyze stuff ah about your subscribers, then just check that that third-party tool, that AI tool, is GDPR compliant.

10:02.11

Kennedy Kennedy

Because what you can't be doing is giving that tool permission to use your customers' data. If it's not in a GDPR compliant way, it means you're literally passing that information on to other people and you don't have the permission from the people who gave it to you in the first place.

10:20.17

Kennedy Kennedy

It's really easy to do. Just go have a quick look for the GDPR statement or GDPR compliance statement on that on that platform or just drop them an email and say, hey, how does this work the GDPR? What's your GDPR policy?

10:32.74

Kennedy Kennedy

And just make sure they are compliant. Number six is here's a really the interesting one, right? Is a lot of people think that GDPR um means that you can't do cold out with Gmail anymore. That is not true.

10:44.36

Kennedy Kennedy

If you are doing it, especially B2B, honestly, like GDPR is kind of much more relaxed if you're selling to other businesses and communicating to other businesses like we do. And it's a little trickier with B2C, like direct to customers, but it's possible. People are doing it and they're doing it really compliantly. So don't think for a second that because GDPR exists, you can't do cold outreach.

11:05.33

Kennedy Kennedy

You absolutely can. And again, there's just specific advice around that. I don't really teach cold outreach. I'm not going to get into that, but i just want you to know GDPR did not kill a cold outreach. It's effective and it works.

11:17.62

Kennedy Kennedy

Number seven. is don't sync all of the data with everything. I see this a lot when I'm working on client accounts. And that is a contact will come in maybe through like a type form or something like that.

11:32.29

Kennedy Kennedy

And then they'll use Make and Zapier and all these connecting tools. And they'll put that contact information into everything, the CRM, the email system, the calendar booking system, the the finance system.

11:43.76

Kennedy Kennedy

And they'll put them into all of these different systems. You shouldn't be doing that because if the customer, if the if the subscriber is not a customer yet, why do they need to be in the finance system? They don't need to be. So you want to just make sure you don't auto sync someone's data across everything.

11:58.10

Kennedy Kennedy

Of course, if you're using an all in one platform, like many people are, it's going to be in that one platform, which means it's naturally synced across everything or sunk against everything. don't know what the right word is there. It's naturally in every platform because it's in one platform by its very nature.

12:11.93

Kennedy Kennedy

So there you go. Seven different ways to be making sure that you're much more GDPR compliant. If you're worried about any of this stuff, if you're thinking, how do I apply this? or if you just want to check any of this stuff out, which I do recommend you do, then of course, speak to a consultant, talk to a lawyer or something like that.

12:29.14

Kennedy Kennedy

That's it for this week. I'll be back with another episode next week. Make sure you hit subscribe and I will see you then.