GDPR, When customer data seems to hot to handle..

In the United Kingdom , bar \ restaurant and pub chain J.D. Wetherspoon has deleted its entire email emailing database. It has also said it will stop sending newsletters via its email marketing tools. The amazing move was communicated out to customers on Friday June 23 in an email from ceo John Hutson.

His email detailed “Many companies use email to promote themselves, but we don't want to take this approach – which many consider intrusive,” “Our database of customers’ email addresses, including yours, will be deleted.”.

Wow, some move. I imagine that will put the hair up on the back of most marketeers. Why? I guess it seems so alien a thing for a company to do who works off the basis of customers coming into its chain. I guess the question would arise as to why on earth would someone need to do this? Well how about a 4% fine of global turnover for large breaches of customer data when GDPR comes active in May 2018..

Wetherspoon will instead of using monthly emails to update customers on special offers will going forward promote deals on its other media channels such as its website, Twitter and Facebook pages.

The firm suffered a breach of its customer database in 2015 and at that time there was it was 650,000 emails plus in the list. So we'd have to imagine it will need to delete around that number of email addresses.

Also GDPR needs you to prove you have legal consent to use the email addresses you have to market to those's emails so its also leading to the end of the email marketing list purchasing business. So thats a 1 to 1 relationship between you and the person your emailing and leaves no room for third parties. Not a week goes by that some company doesn't try send me an email saying they will send me a list of some software solution users. Next year, those companies will go out of business as they run the risk of huge GDPR fines its not fairly clear they don't have the email users best interest at heart.

The news on Weatherspoon comes after several companies received fines for emarketing to customers who did not explicitly give them consent t. Airline Flybe was fined $90,000 by the UK's Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) after sending more than 3 million emails under the interesting title of “Are your details correct?”

Car manufacturer Honda was fined $17,000 by the ICO after sending 289,790 emails asking whether customers wanted to continue receiving marketing. Grocery chain Morrisons was also fined $13,500 for sending 131,000 emails to people who had already opted out of marketing related to the companies existing loyalty card.

"On a risk basis, it’s just not worth holding large amounts of customer data which is bringing insufficient value," "This could be the case even where the organisation is clear on which customers have given consent to marketing and which haven’t." as detailed by Jon Baines who is chairperson of The National Association of Data Protection and Freedom of Information Officers.

As there is no good way for Wetherspoon to show a historical audit of who had given consent, it has no real choice but to delete the data or run the risk of very large fines.

So to some up, May 2018 is a critical time after which the fines are going to multiple up hugely. Unless you've got the most clean , consent assured email list , you are going to have to weigh up the value of the list over the potential for substantial fines.