Many business owners hesitate when it comes to cold emailing, fearing they might violate GDPR regulations. The good news is that cold emailing is completely legal when done correctly. This article explains what you need to know about staying compliant while building meaningful business connections through email outreach.
Before sending a single email, you need to understand how you can legally collect email addresses. Under GDPR, there are specific circumstances where collecting personal data (including email addresses) is permitted.
It is legal to collect emails when:
- Users give you their consent: this is usually done through contact forms and consent boxes (silence or previously checked boxes are not valid).
- They come from public and accessible sources: telephone directories, public social network profiles, web pages, lists of professional associations, etc.
So don't be afraid to use tools like LeaDigger, which can collect, in an automated way, the public contact details that are published on social media profiles. It is one of the most effective and affordable growth strategies nowadays.
The GDPR regulation also affects the way you send these emails.
You cannot bombard with promotions if the user has not authorized you. Therefore, the first contact must be non-commercial. You must ensure that you inform about the treatment of the data and offer the possibility that the user can unsubscribe from your emails.
To summarize, these are the essential tips to send cold emails in compliance with the regulations:
- Collect emails from public sources, that is, you can get the emails that are publicly listed on the internet, or use automated tools that do this work for you, for example LeaDigger.
- Do not make promotions in your very first communication. Don't be too commercial in your first email. Try to be creative, natural, and not sound too commercial. Make it look like you're not selling, but creating relationships.
A simple way to ensure that you comply with the regulations is that in this first email you try to help and add value. Offer solutions to people who may need your products or services.
The call to action of the first cold email can be sending a person to valuable content that you have created (blog, instructional video, podcast...). The call to action could, as well, invite the user to answer your email or schedule a call with you.
Sell without selling. What you want are relationships that last over time. You will see how you sell later after this first interaction, or even with the information you have added in your email signature (website, LinkedIn, contact information...).
Add a legal text at the end of your emails. In this text you must indicate that they can unsubscribe to stop receiving emails.
You just have to be certain that your idea or project can be of great help to the people behind those emails. Once you have their favorable reaction, start interacting with the user.
Cold emailing is one of the most effective and profitable tools that you can use to capture potential clients, scale your business and sell more.
And the best thing is that it will cost you less money than any other type of promotion. But for doing this, you first need a quality and targeted email list.
If you have any questions about GDPR compliance or how LeaDigger helps maintain compliance with data protection regulations, please contact us at support@leaddiger.com