Privacy in Email Marketing: Chris Donald in Conversation With Dennis Dayman

Chris Donald: Hey, everybody. Here with Dennis. Hey, Dennis. How are you doing?

Dennis Dayman: I’m doing well, friend. Just, sitting here in lockdown like that rest of everybody else.

Chris Donald: I know. It’s crazy. Right? You know, having to put everybody from working from home and I mean, we had to put, like, almost a 130 people working from home between different countries. But no issues yet.

Right?

Dennis Dayman: Yeah.

Chris Donald: You know, we’re really lucky that we work in an industry where we can work from home. Right? Yeah. So Yeah. I know we’re blessed in that respect.

Alright. So

Dennis Dayman: different. Yeah.

Chris Donald: Yeah. Yeah.

Dennis Dayman: It’s a little different because, you know, like like I was talking to some people just even yesterday, we had a couple of webinars this week, and it was odd trying to get the webinars to work exactly how they worked a week or 2 ago. And what we’re and what we’re finding is that so many of us are now working at home that even now when I try to use my mobile device right now, I keep getting all circuits are busy or the Internet has gotten slow because everybody else around here is on the same thing. Absolutely. And, unfortunately, I think the same thing is happening. We could talk about this in a second, but it’s even happening in email marketing.

There’s too much email going out right now.

Chris Donald: Well, yeah. You know, I was talking to, well, you know him, John Caldwell the other day, and he was and I had said to him, you know, I was wondering if there’s more email or less email going out right now. I have to believe there’s more

Dennis Dayman: Mhmm.

Chris Donald: For all kinds of reasons, you know, stay at home stuff, all that. Not to mention, we’re all having problems to a point whether it’s Internet or phone connections or certainly the conference software has been has issues for sure. Right? We’ve seen that multiple times. But, yeah, I was trying to decide if they’re actually less marketing email being sent or more.

Not just email in general, but marketing versus, you know, marketing email compared to before.

Dennis Dayman: You know, there is probably a little bit more, I would say, just to be completely honest, because, you know, what we’re seeing, obviously, this kinda reminds me of 2,008, right, when the market downturned. I remember, you know, when we had Eloqua, you know, it was still a very strong company on its own. And what we and we worried about it. I remember Eloqua and and everyone else said, oh my gosh. This is this market’s, you know, gonna hurt us.

And what we found was is that, well, companies basically had said their CFOs had said, hey. Listen. We’re down on money right now, but you as the marketer need to do a whole lot more right now because you need to drive that revenue in as soon as possible. And sure enough, what we had saw just from a company perspective is people started buying marketing automation like crazy.

Chris Donald: Yeah.

Dennis Dayman: I think the same thing’s happening here because there are a lot of companies that either are both brick and mortar but also online. And if you look at my at my wife’s, you know, inbox, you know, she’s getting tons and tons and tons of offers, like and it’s not usually like the typical, like well, not typical, but, you know, people are trying not to be insensitive. Like, hey, it’s COVID and and and and, you know, and we need to make some money or we’re giving you discounts because it’s COVID. Use coupon, you know, use the coupon code COVID.

Chris Donald: Right.

Dennis Dayman: But but what we’re hearing from brands and marketers is saying, hey. Listen. We understand the problem right now that that, you know, times are tough right now, and, you know, and we’re here for you. And as such, you know, we’re trying to do the right thing. So if you need help, you know, please, you know, you can buy here and you can get some money off.

I mean, even the stores, like, you know, you and I live in Texas here, so we’re under the Tom Thumb, you know, banner. Right. But, you know, the parent company, which is Albertsons, you know, as you and I saw in the last week

Chris Donald: Or Safeway. Right? Safeways.

Dennis Dayman: Safeway is the other one. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So but but they said, hey.

Listen. You know, here’s how we’re going to help you. We’re reducing hours. Yes. But it’s only because we need time to restock.

And it was it was informative, and I knew that I could only go to the store between 7 and 10, I think.

Chris Donald: Yeah. That was a useful email. Right?

Dennis Dayman: Yeah. It was a very useful email. And then it got better. And, you know, not that I’m calling you out for age or anything, but, know, then they said, hey. You know, for for, you know, anybody else that might be more susceptible to this, we’re we’re gonna allow, you know, the early hours for people.

And my my dad is, you know and you know my dad. You

Chris Donald: better Yeah.

Dennis Dayman: Yeah. But, you know, he’s in his seventies, and it’s like, we’re gonna get opportunity to come shop safely between the 9 on Tuesdays Thursdays. Those are very limited and things like we need to be hearing. However and a whole lot, you know, other ones, I’m not gonna name this one actually. You know, the the more major tire company that’s in our area.

Right? You know, I got the email saying, hey. You know, we’re here for you and worst business so that you can replace. Well, I that was gonna happen, but now my mind is not preparing flats. You know?

So

Chris Donald: Yeah. Yeah. It’s it’s it’s funny. I I I think so on the, you know, on the agency side for us, what we saw was a big uptick in our clients wanting to pause automations, redo them for this because, you know, hey, we miss you. Emails, yeah, well, of course you do, and I can’t come because here I am.

Right? You know, things like that. Even pausing birth date emails for now because it’s just a weird thing. Right? Some clients did that.

Updating

Dennis Dayman: Which is smart because people are already kinda going, how do I really solve like, the boys turn my team, like, a week. How how am I gonna do that right now? I don’t know. You know?

Chris Donald: Yeah. Yeah. It it’s strange. But let’s get over to the privacy side of things here.

Dennis Dayman: Yeah.

Chris Donald: Privacy thing. So, you know, because not everybody who will see this video is gonna be an expert in email marketing, You know, what are the laws around email marketing? You know, US, Canada well, US, we have we have, California doing its own thing over there. Okay. We have Canada with CASL, and we have GDPR.

You know, California is the CCPA. Yeah. Why don’t you go through a little bit of that? Yeah.

Dennis Dayman: Sure. You know? So, you know, there are a number of different laws that that, you know, the email marketing, folks should know about. Right? And as you already stated, right, one of the more ones is canned spam that started in 2003.

In 2008, we did an update to that.

Chris Donald: And and and let me just say, canned spam was really created because of porn spam. Right? That’s where it grew from. Right?

Dennis Dayman: It grew from. Yeah. You know, there were people that were getting started getting that that that stuff, and so they went after it. You know? And so, you know, so it it became that act.

Then to our brother and just up north of us in North America, you know, you know, Canada, They they had problem. Actually, their issues began where they weren’t able to really prosecute any individuals for sending spam in Canada, And so, you know, CASL, you know, became their law. Actually, then in the UK, you know, the UK has actually had its own set of laws, and I’m not talking GDPR or the original privacy directive, but they had the privacy electronic communications regulations of 2,000 and you know, and and so there’s a lot of different laws that are not privacy based, right, that that are email based, that are out there and and that dictate the conditions that email marketers must follow. And it’s everything from, you know, ensuring permission, you know, you know, to put people on your list to not having misleading header headers to identifying, your emails and advertising, which people still sometimes forget about, including addresses and that sort of thing. So there’s been enough of those.

And interestingly enough, you and I have been around for a long period. The the misuse of data, I think, for a lot of us started Oh god. Just on you know, particularly in in email address, and that’s sort of why why we’re seeing that. And, you know, really, it makes it very almost every law has made it very simple where it’s like, again, you know, tell your email reader where the email is coming from and, you know, be honest about it. Right?

You know, who are you? Don’t don’t, you know, make some some, you know, craziness. You know, like, I’ve seen the typical, how are you doing? It’s been a long time to talk. And you open it, and it’s some, you know, sleazy sales guy will sell you a a big card, warranty now or

Chris Donald: Yeah. Or the RE. Right? The RE that isn’t an RE. Right?

The the reply that’s not a reply. Right?

Dennis Dayman: Right. Exactly. Exactly.

Chris Donald: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it it’s it’s there’s, you know, there’s some definite strange stuff. So a real quick question because you had said, you mentioned UK and and Europe. Yeah.

So just for the folks out there, GDPR was was that a a a whole Europe thing? Was it a you know, who who did who did that cover? Right? So

Dennis Dayman: Right. So, you know, if you look at historically

Chris Donald: EU group. Right? I don’t know what the deal is here. Right?

Dennis Dayman: Well, if you look at, sort of, historically, you know, the EU was never the EU. All the time, the EU. Right? It was always a separate set of different countries. And then, you know, what they decided to do was combine forces, if you will.

Right? The enemies and other things too. And and basically, you know, got rid of, you know, borders, if you will. We call it the chagrin. Right?

Just like the US is. Right? I can go you you and I can get in our car today and drive to Oklahoma or Louisiana, and we have a federal, you know, state. And if you will, then we have our own sort of things that happen within the state of Texas.

Chris Donald: Passports. We don’t need identification. We can just we can drive from one end of the country to the other, go through a bunch of states with no issues.

Dennis Dayman: Exactly. That’s a good idea. And, you know, the EU decided to to to form, you know, you know, the well, the EU. Now, you know, back in the all star in the seventy example, like, the United Kingdom had its own privacy laws. Right?

The 1973, 64, 75, they had their own versions of their privacy laws and so did the other countries. But, of course, when the EU came together, you know, part of that was to make things easier, right, and to get rid of those, you know, virtual lines in some cases. And so, you know, for for the European Union, when the Internet really became even more popular even in the mid nineties, they came out what’s called the EU directive or the EU or the directive of 1995, which was the first sort of attempt to not even attempt, but to get a directive if you would said, okay, you know, electronic forms of of of information now are out there, and and we need to put a little bit of of understanding and rules around that. And and that was the EU itself doing that. Right?

Everyone kind of came together. And and again, each country also had their own rules that could go even further than that, and we’ll use Germany. You know, we know that Germany has, you know, historically had bad things happen, and they don’t wanna ever see the misuse of data ever and because it didn’t go very well in in World War 2. But, you know, now what we have to see then is we’re 95 and up until, you know, 2008, 2000 and well, the Internet even changed more. Right?

For you and I in the mid nineties, again, it was the misuse of email and and misuse of data. But, you know, again, you start bringing in social media. You start bringing in these mobile devices and all these little gadgets that you and I have. Yep. Well, they needed to up they wanted to upgrade, if you will, in in a sense, and and to address those other new technologies because we’re moving at such a face path, pace right now.

That GDPR, again, and to go to answer your question again, was done by the European Union itself. All 28 members at the time, It’s now 20 because of Brexit. Mhmm. But they all wanted to make sure they protect this the the the rights of their citizens.

Chris Donald: So does that mean that the UK is no longer under GDPR?

Dennis Dayman: Good question, actually. And that’s one that I get a lot of in confusion. You know, the way that I tell people right now is in Brexit, there is, I don’t know, 65,000 to have to go for somewhere around 2,000. Right? You know, what we saw recently, which is basically an agreement, an an early agreement to, begin Brexit in the process, and they agreed on certain you know, asked terms.

Right? And it’s everything from, like, well, you know, our order’s still open or, you know, how to deal with with with with the economy and and things like that.

Chris Donald: Employment of people over borders and all. Right?

Dennis Dayman: Right? Exactly. Exactly. And so what now has to happen is they will continue those other steps, and the steps somewhere down the road will be, do we stay under the GDPR, or do we wanna do our own law? And right now, the way the agreement is set is they’re currently still under GDPR.

So that’s good. It makes it much easier. They have already begun discussions at looking at upgrading their own again, most countries have their own laws, to make more specific or even more stringent, you know, things happen. But they’re already looking at that now. So it is possible that at some point, you decide, we don’t wanna have anything to do with the protection authorities and you or vice versa.

The EU could basically, you know, say we don’t deal with you anymore. You know, go off and and and do your own thing. Could be possible that you may consider that, and what that would mean then is, as you’re stating, is the the UK would be its country. That would mean that, you know, virtually moving data from one country like France, which is right next door in a sense, you know, would you would have to have an agreement to move data between the French authorities or French locations to the UK. Right.

The same way you have to do that now. So it cranes things up, but for all, they’re still one of the GDPR.

Chris Donald: Yeah. And they could say, okay, we’re not gonna be part of GDPR, but we’re gonna adopt everything in GDPR and put it in ours. I mean, that could be one option. Right? I wouldn’t be surprised if something if they do wanna separate completely.

Right?

Dennis Dayman: Well, and and if they did that, that also could mean that the UK would generate what we would call efficacy. Right? Inadequacy would mean the countries, the other twin members would wrecking the UK as having adequate private actions and as such free flow of data. And without contracts, the way that we unfortunately have to do it today between the US and the EU. Right.

You know? And if it helps anybody to to not have any heartache about this idea, you know, the European Union, you know, in last or so recognizes Japan. Japan’s always had property law. Over the last couple of years, they’ve sort of upgraded it to to kind of come in line with, with today’s technology, but the EU has decided to recognize Japan. So that makes the free flow of data and the data driven economies work easier and faster.

So if they can do that with Japan, I’m sure that they can figure that out even between the EU and the UK if they had to. Yep.

Chris Donald: So what is the difference between because we hear anti spam laws and we hear privacy laws. Right? Yeah. And sometimes people mix them up, I think. So what is the difference there?

Dennis Dayman: Yeah. So yeah. It’s it people here confuse at all with them in terms of what’s happening. In fact, I think people were even confusing them more when GDPR came out because I think more than half of the of the US national companies identified GDPR almost 2 years ago as a top priority for them. But there, you know, but there are a lot of, you know, differences in terms of what they’re doing, and, really, it’s our scope.

Right? If you look at can’t spam, you know, the scope is about any commercial electronic message. Right? But then if you go to the next anti spam law next door and which is Canada, then it’s any commercial electronic message, including email, SMS, audio, video sent through Canada, and it gets even more complicated. Let’s say GDPR.

GDPR sits similar to CASP. Right? And then but it indicates sorry. It includes more tougher personal data protection safeguards that have to be built into eproducts and things like that. So when you look at the email laws, they’re they’re really focusing on the inbox.

They’re really focusing on on emails and commercial messages, whereas the

Chris Donald: Holding the sender holding the sender responsible. Right?

Dennis Dayman: Hold sender responsible. Right? But when you get into Castle, then they go off further. Email and it’s SMS and other communications, including social media. And then you get into GDPR, and it’s not just about channel, but it’s about the identifier.

Right? And that’s unfortunately, it’s written let’s say unfortunately. Maybe it’s just written so broadly that it could be an email address, Social Security number, phone number, you know, a nickname, almost anything that could identify an individual. Right? And so it also changes too as well because, you know, the consent rules can be right?

For most anti spam laws in the early days, they were all about opt out just the way that we are here in the US. And you and I joke about this all the time. Right? When we talk can’t spam, it’s because you can spam.

Chris Donald: Spam. Right. Because it yes.

Dennis Dayman: It gives you yeah.

Chris Donald: It’s it’s the weakest of them all. Right? I mean, come on. Weakest of them all. Yeah.

Exactly.

Dennis Dayman: But then you’ll but then you look at Castle, and, of course, they move to, you know, opt in, and you can either do verbal or even written, you know, opt ins or not. And and they even get into the idea of, like, you know, if you have an implied consent, just how long could that be? And it could be up to 2 years. But then, again, with GDPR being a private a privacy law, you know, it’s opt in. Right?

It’s similar to cans sorry, to CASL, but it extends opt in rules for the collection, the sharing, the processing of personal data, and also requires you to renew that more often. And, again, so as you can tell, it’s more than just about the email address anymore. Right. So they do overlap though. Right?

GDPR, CASL, and CAN SPAM do overlap. Right? They talk about defining, you know, impermissible electronic communications like spam. They set standards on permissible permission communications, which are which are things like, you know, limits on how many you can send and requirements for senders to, you know, identify themselves. Don’t lie about who you are.

You have to have a clear unsubscribe or opt out or opt in mechanism. Right?

Chris Donald: Yep.

Dennis Dayman: You know, things like that that I think are are are definitely there that that people kinda oh, okay. That makes sense. But really, you know, if you sort of take a look at it, right, each time that you gather these consents and whatnot, if you start applying, I think, at least in my opinion, you know, sort of top dog in all this, where I start looking at, you know, GDPR and saying, well, okay. It requires opt in. If I do opt in, I’m gonna wholly in just about comply with Woodcastle.

I’m gonna be going beyond what I’m required to within can’t spam. You know, Laura Atkins from word of the wise has has always said and has always really harped on, and I love her for this. You know? I hate it when spammers or people back to me and say, well, I can’t spam compliance, so you can’t yell at me. You know?

You’re you’re doing the bare minimum, folks, and you’re doing yourself a disjustice here at this point. It’s like, come on. You can do better than this.

Chris Donald: Well, no. And and you know what? In the end, the recipients rule the roost, really. Right? So they’re gonna unsubscribe.

They’re gonna complain. They’re gonna whatever. Right? And which is why those same people call, Matt Bernhardt to go, hey, why are they blocking me? I’m I’m legal.

I’m fine because I just I just finished an interview with Matt. Right? So and, you know, that was one of the things. Oh, yeah. I do I I’m legal.

Well, legal doesn’t matter much. I mean, don’t get me wrong. It matters, but that’s not the driver of what people do. Right? Yeah.

Dennis Dayman: So And that’s and and that’s a good, though, because if you think about it I’m sorry to interrupt you there. If you think about it, we also know that consumers and people I think you really need to understand this if you’re listening here that we have a more, I don’t know, informed consumer now because of all the data breaches we’ve seen, of all the misuse of data, Facebook came but it comes as a good example. Sorry, Facebook. But, you know, people are now kinda going, oh, okay. You know, years ago, I used to have 16 mailbox or inboxes or, email accounts.

And then in the last couple of years, they went down to a much lower level, like 2 to 3. And now people are kinda going, oh, I’m gonna hold back my information more or I’m gonna segment it out more because I don’t trust brands anymore because there’s been too much misuse. And yeah. And as as Matt said, I mean, yeah. Again, if you’re just doing the bare minimum, then you’re not gonna win the trust over of that consumer.

Chris Donald: Right. And I know lots of people that have multiple email addresses, because they use one to sign up for newsletters or or ecommerce stuff or, you know, do that type of thing. They have a separate one to do their banking and legal stuff that they don’t use anywhere else on the web. Right? Sure.

And and I do a little bit of that myself. So Right. Not unusual. I know you have multiple email addresses, because whenever I go to email, you type in Dennis, I end up with, like, 18 op freaking options, right, between the

Dennis Dayman: companies and everything else. But so, anyway,

Chris Donald: but, yeah, I mean, that’s I think most people have 2 or 3. Right? I think that’s pretty normal. You know, you have a work personal, a couple of personals. You know, I think the whole everybody in the world has a Gmail address almost.

Right? Yeah. And that is getting there anyway. Yeah. Yeah.

We were we we when I talked to Matt earlier, we were talking about back in the nineties when it really started going the early 9 even late eighties, early nineties, you know, Prodigy and then AOL coming in and that. Everybody paid for their email back then, if you think about it. Right? I mean, Juno was, like, one of those first companies, right, that was free email. Right.

The Juno mail and some of the others that were out there. And then, of course, the big hammer with Gmail came along and said, oh, yeah. Terabyte of storage, and we’ll just let you do whatever you want, or whatever they did. I forget what it was exactly. Right.

Alright. So I know there’s confusion out there with people, and there was even with me in the beginning with CCPA. Right? So a lot of people try to equate it to CASEL, but it’s actually very different from what I understand. That’s really more about data.

There is more of an opt out process than an opt in like for GDPR. Right? Is that is that right or

Dennis Dayman: wrong? That is not sorry. I understand.

Chris Donald: So so so theirs is more about protecting the data. Right?

Dennis Dayman: Oh, yeah. GDPR. Yes. It is. Yeah.

Chris Donald: It’s Well, I mean, in CCPA, same thing, sort of. Right?

Dennis Dayman: And also access, you know, access to the data too. You know, Castle, which is an email now Canada does have a lottery one, just so you know around privacy called PIPPA, which, you know, also extend other data types as well. But, really find that many marketers know this, and they just kinda usually focus on castle. But, yeah, but, Chris, to your point is that, yeah, I mean, both of them talk about, you know, opt out. You know, Castle talks about it from just the strict totality of opt from getting any more kind, whereas GDPR takes that further.

And it’s like, yes. I wanna opt out or I wanna delete or I wanna even access my data. That I think that’s where a lot of people are unprepared is all of a sudden they get somebody who goes, hey. You have my email address. I got something from you.

I’d like to know what else you have on me. And you do that, then, you know, by the way, I’d like for you to delete all my information. Oh my gosh. What do you mean deleting your information? I what?

Yeah. I’ve never dealt with that. Can’t spam doesn’t tell me to do that. Neither does castle. Well, I guess, as you said, Chris, it’s both GDPR and CCPA, and now the other states are are hearing these are coming up with these, you know, laws that that would allow consumers to to control any information about them because we know it’s controlled.

Right. You know, data broker are a real pain in the rear. Yeah. And I I I just even this past 3 weeks, I can’t tell you again, just like GDPR on, the week or sorry, the month before GDPR went into enforcement. I don’t know about you, but I forgot how many people I email address.

And I was able to unsubscribe from a lot of unknown places like Garmin. Like, I haven’t had a Garmin PS unit for how many years because my phone does it right now or my watch does it. And that same thing happened this week with COVID. I got all these, like, reminders. Hey.

We’re here for you. And I’m half of them I don’t even remember giving you my email address. It allowed me, you know, from just even a a normal perspective or thought process to their best practice, I should say, to remove myself. Can you those that have the under Califa or even GDPR, they saw that and go, I don’t remember giving you my email address. What else do you have on me, and where did they’re from?

If he was a brand or a marketer can’t answer that question, you’re probably gonna be in deep, you know, deep trouble.

Chris Donald: Yeah. Yeah. And and, you know, so it’s funny. I requested I requested my information from a company that isn’t in California, by the way. Right?

And I asked them for my information with you just to see what would happen. And it’s a Right. It’s one of the lesser known, like, conference software. Let’s say that. Mhmm.

Sort of. Right? And so I asked them to send that to me, and and they said, sure. Give us 24 hours. And they sent me this Excel file, and when I opened it, it was a self Excel file with every single customer of theirs.

Dennis Dayman: Yeah.

Chris Donald: All their information, credit card numbers, expiration dates, CVV numbers,

Dennis Dayman: everything. Including mine.

Chris Donald: So I called them. Right. And I I talked to the woman who sent it to me, and she’s, like, laughing. Oh, I’m sorry. I sent you the wrong file.

I said, what are you, out of your mind? What is this doing sitting on your computer like this anyway?

Dennis Dayman: Right.

Chris Donald: Right? Oh, so just send it back. And I’m like, no. I’m not gonna send it back through the Internet yet again.

Dennis Dayman: You’re already there anyways, dude.

Chris Donald: Yeah. So I said, can I talk to a manager? Oh, this is no big deal. I said, no. This is, like, the biggest deal.

Right? Right. So when I told I finally got to one of the managers or whoever it was, and he was, like, oh my god. Right?

Dennis Dayman: Yeah.

Chris Donald: And and he said, let me take care of this. I’m sorry. Can you shred delete that thing? I should that’s my plan. She wanted me to send it back.

No. Don’t send it back. Right? And and I did, of course. Right?

But Right. Right. I mean, that’s the problem is companies don’t understand how to manage their own data. Right? I mean, clearly, because you don’t do that.

You don’t build your own spreadsheet of all that information. Live it sitting on the desktop of someone’s computer. Holy crap. Anyway Yeah. Sorry.

That was just a rant real quick.

Dennis Dayman: No. But you’re right, though, because the the problem as well, and this actually would work for our listeners here today is, you know, you are all data stewards. You know, you’re all responsible, not just the chief privacy officers, but you yourself are a part of the team in all of this. And so whatever it is that you’re building from a marketing perspective or marketing program, buying list or or, you know, the you know, collecting email address is not, You have to understand to some extent today your job actually includes that being privacy by design or privacy, you know, knowing what the impact is gonna be. And the problem is is that we’re not we don’t this stuff in college.

It keeps us, I don’t think, in in many places. I mean, you know, the work that we do, the coalitions that you and I are part of, of course, we try to have these classes

Chris Donald: for for folks.

Dennis Dayman: But Yeah. Companies just aren’t aren’t aren’t, you know, certifying people, and it’s it’s kinda scary. I mean, you know, the IPP, which is the organization that basically certifies me and and knowing the laws in different countries and whatnot, you know, years ago when it was just a couple of folks sitting around a kegger basically, you know, talking you know,

Chris Donald: it was a bunch of

Dennis Dayman: lawyers, CPOs, and whatnot. That organization now is 55,000, almost maybe even 60, I think, maybe now. Thousand people that are not just lawyers and CPOs, but they’re marketing managers and they’re IT professionals, and they’re these guys from from from this group. And what we’re seeing is people or or companies are taking responsibility to say, hey. Everybody needs to play a part in it.

So if you’re hearing stories like this and going, yeah. We kinda do the same thing. You probably need to teach those people how to be a privacy professional to some extent.

Chris Donald: Yeah. No doubt. No doubt. So, you know, without I don’t wanna go too long on this. We’re gonna be coming up on a half an hour.

Just don’t wanna bore people just listening to you and us to gab. Hopefully, it’s valuable to them, but because

Dennis Dayman: we can do this for hours. So

Chris Donald: so this is one good question. So how can a company, whether they’re a startup, an existing company, how can they legally build their list, you know, with so many privacy laws. Right? And we we talked about that a little bit. You have to I guess, you default to the highest common denominator to go, okay, these have the highest rules, is this what we use?

So do you use GDPR? Do you use GDPR and CCPA together? Do they you know, what do you do? Right? How do you Right.

How do you do that?

Dennis Dayman: Yeah. So people give us some legal advice, you know, there’s my blessing or warning or whatever you wanna call it. It it’s really gonna sort of depend on on, yeah, a country and what your target would be. I think we’re dealing with and, Chris, you and I have talked about it before. We still see that marketers or brands don’t necessarily maintain or manage list by location or, you know, where the person list still and, you know, just jaw dropped it.

When I go to fill out a form, all I all they ask for is my name and my email address and never the country that I might be in. And I think that’s very important as well because knowing where people are coming is gonna help you apply the right procedures and and stuff. I I guess the first thing I would probably tell everybody here is is don’t buy an email list. I mean, and I know Chris completely said this. Don’t buy an email list.

You can never guarantee or you will never get a guarantee from those individuals where that data came from or who it belonged to in the past. And you really have recourse as well because if you end up using that list, can’t go back to a data protection authority who might be coming after you for sending spam or breaching a privacy law, you can’t go back to them and say, well, it’s not my fault. They that doesn’t work anymore.

Chris Donald: Right.

Dennis Dayman: You know, you know, the the DPAs or data protection authority basically are holding people accountable for, you know, for the things that they knew about. Right? So that’s one of the things you have to sort of, you know, be careful with. But, you know, if you are buying the list, right, and you are purchasing that personal data, you’re also, again, purchasing that that that data with people who have not given, like, consent. Right?

And so if they’re not on there, right, you know, you know, for for for many places, it’s it would be an immediate violate. But, you know sorry. You wanna say something?

Chris Donald: Nope. Nope. No. It was just yawning. Sorry.

Not that you’re boring. I’m just tired.

Dennis Dayman: Well, it’s, it’s almost dinner for you and I. I think it’s flock. Right? How that works without Yeah.

Chris Donald: Yeah. Something like that. Well and it’s strange. You know, I think the whole and like you said, you went out for a walk. I do that as well.

Because when you’re at home, you don’t you’re not doing all the stuff you normally do. Right? So I think it actually makes you more tired because you’re just not as physically moving around. Right? Yeah.

Exactly. But alright. So, you know, I I think that, you know, we we can touch on really quickly if you want to, because I don’t think people really understand, the differences of, you know. So what do you consider when it comes to transactional versus marketing or mixed message? Right?

What happens there?

Dennis Dayman: Yeah. You know, so so so this is kind of an interesting place because, you know, the differences aren’t really not always blind and white depending on what it is. You know, if you’re look you know, if you’re located in the US with with with can spam, you know, it’s obviously pretty common to receive factual messages with some marketing message as well and vice versa. You know, the rules from the trade commission or at least the advice a couple of years ago had been sort of the you know, it’s up to the perception of the individual. Right?

And so a lot of us then said, okay. We’ll find, you know, then really, you know, if you’re gonna do messages like this, then marketing in that message should be somewhere at the very bottom, and it should be not a whole lot of content. It’ll be, you know, 80 20 rule, 7 30 rule, but make sure that that low nomination is

Chris Donald: at the

Dennis Dayman: bottom of the message. Because when the message is first looked at and perceived, it should be processed transactional at one point. It gets a little bit different in other countries, you know, marketing, you know, transactional. And the privacy law things. Right?

I don’t wanna bore everybody here, but there are different rules for processing data, and one of those rules is called contractual obligation. So if you have a contractual obligation under GDPR to send somebody information about their bill or something related to the product they bought, then you can send them a message left and right. But if it’s not attractively obligated because they never opted in for marketing, then you shouldn’t even put marketing messages within that transactional mess. It should be separate. Interestingly enough, and I know that that that Chris here, you know, would also agree, we’ve always said that passive email separation is always gonna be best.

You know, you know, Chris and I were supposed to be in London over the last couple of weeks, but we spent, unfortunately, a a large amount of time canceling hauls and airlines and on. And what we wanted to see in our hell was when we got our refunds and were they processing those refunds. Not so much, hey. You know, you know, sad to see you go, or, hey. We do have an offer for you in October.

Want a return. You know, more interested in what was then. In fact, even trying to, you know, for flights. We were more in just transactional mess. And those are important because I want those, and I’m not gonna mark those as spam where I’m gonna be marketing be more as as spam.

So, yeah, I think that there definitely is that problem that you kinda have to consider it. And it also comes down to 2 laws as well.

Chris Donald: Yeah, and I think there’s you know, there are some messages that people it’s funny. I the the sort of, the explanation or the validation of why they call something a transactional message. Like, I have I know a lot of people that think cart abandonment is a transactional message, when clearly, it’s a marketing message. There has not been a transaction yet. Right.

Right? Yeah. Yeah. I had somebody say to me, a welcome message is transactional. And Right?

Because they said, they’re trading or paying for the discount with their email address. So there’s a transaction happen. And, I mean, you’re right. This is what goes right? And I’m going, stop.

Dennis Dayman: Right? Stop. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Donald: Yeah. You can call anything you want, whatever you want, but no. Okay? Right. Transactionals there’s transactional, and then there’s system message or account messaging, I call it, where, you know, password resets, you know, that type of thing.

You know, if you’re if you’re on a a list and there’s a new person post and you say send them to me, I can send those to you. Right? Right. But yeah. And the and the marketing, there’s benefits to it in transactional, for sure.

But, yeah, you don’t go overboard. If you have a little section at the bottom with, similar products that people have bought by. Right?

Dennis Dayman: Yeah.

Chris Donald: But, yeah, I I don’t think they really Yeah.

Dennis Dayman: Think Yeah. Because, like yeah. Because, yeah, because, like you said, like, you could, you know, it really it it it really is in the location because you know to do a messages in a mixed message in Canada, then the patrol baners would have to do because Castle prohibits that mixture. You know? So just people need to think about it.

But, again, I I not only because of the privacy and email law, I think just straight purposes of transactional versus marketing versus alerts and and the the list goes on. If one gets blocked, the other one won’t get blocked. But some things that had gone. It’s just the best case anyways. We’ve been taught for 20 years.

Chris Donald: Yeah. So what was I just gonna say? I was gonna say, when so does when people send a I’m trying to think how the best way to say this. You know what? Maybe I’ll worry about this later.

I just can’t think of the best way to say it. Alright. No worries. I think we’ve covered enough here. I think that’ll give people lots to think about.

You know, there is lots to learn and and there’s all kinds of organizations out there that you can, there are classes on privacy. There’s, a lot of the email marketing groups, have, some of them have classes, some of them have conferences. Go. Right? Look, find that stuff that you need.

Find the local person who can who can help you come in, train you, go through your program. Yeah. You know, one of the things, you know, all this stuff is actually forcing people to collect more data, not less. Right? Because before you would just connect the email address.

Well, that’s not enough anymore. Right? Right. Now most ESPs, if you’re using their forms and stuff, they’ll, you know, collect the IP address and the time, date stamp, all that stuff. Mhmm.

But and and even location, but that doesn’t isn’t always perfect, because they could be traveling when they subscribe. So you wanna collect, you know, US state, country, things like that. Some of that stuff you have to ask for now

Dennis Dayman: Yeah.

Chris Donald: So that you can go, okay, these people in California, I need to treat them differently. These people are in Canada, I need to treat them differently. These people are in the the UK or the or the EU, I need to treat them differently. Right. And and so I think it forces you actually to collect a little bit more than we normally did back in the day.

Right?

Dennis Dayman: Yeah.

Chris Donald: Well, back in the nineties, it was just the Wild West anyway. But

Dennis Dayman: Yeah. Just an email just before you even had a first name.

Chris Donald: Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, it was it was crazy. Right?

Right. And we could actually send Flash and forms in an email. Right, without no problem at all.

Dennis Dayman: I mean No problem. Pretty normal.

Chris Donald: I mean, a form that you could actually submit and collect information on right in the email. Right? Right. Which is the worst thing. Don’t ever do that, by the way.

Yeah. We we can get through in most cases, but never do that. Right.

Dennis Dayman: Well, I

Chris Donald: guess there is some stuff with AMP now. You can do a little bit of that, I guess. A little bit right now. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Dennis Dayman: But more the multimedia experience in an email now versus having to go to the website.

Chris Donald: Right. Right. Alright. Well, listen. I appreciate you coming on and doing the video with us.

You were again, we had a a short list of of thought leaders in the industry to go after in the beginning. You were certainly on there. We’ve been friends a long time. I understand that. You would have done it anyway probably, but Oh, okay.

Thank you very much.

Dennis Dayman: I wish we could have done it personally.

Chris Donald: No. No. I know. I know. Right?

Right? But, that’s alright. It is good. Everybody I’ve done this with said, oh, no. It’s a nice break.

Right? You know, give me something to do for a while because, you know, on some of us, our work has slowed a little bit, you know, because I don’t do day to day work as much as I used to, so I have some time to do this. But, everybody that I’ve done it with has been very, very happy about it. Kath Pay was very exciting, except she wasn’t she didn’t know it was a video thing, so I she wanted to clean up behind her and then, you know, it was a which is funny. I said I didn’t even care.

I’ve got my Red Sox logo back here and

Dennis Dayman: Yeah. I got my plants over here.

Chris Donald: Yeah. I have this, fork and spoon. Right? So

Dennis Dayman: Right. There you go.

Chris Donald: And it’s, it’s sun it’s Sanchez and, Don Quixote.

Dennis Dayman: Don Quixote. Yeah.

Chris Donald: And my wife hates them, so that’s why they’re in my office. Anyway, thanks again. I appreciate it. And

Dennis Dayman: Oh, I’m

Chris Donald: glad it did. Everybody, thanks for listening. Have a great day.

Dennis Dayman: Take care. Everyone. Take care. Bye bye.