Email Marketing Legal Requirements in Ireland

by Keith Browning

Having a family member working for the National Consumer Agency means I hear about all sorts of illegal practises carried out by organisations here in Ireland – some do it unwittingly but others unfortunately just have a blatant disregard for the law. I thought it might be a good idea to review some of the main legal requirements when it comes to email marketing.

The rule of thumb when it comes to email marketing is that you must obtain the consent of the individual in order to use their personal data for email marketing purposes.

What constitutes consent?

At a minimum, you must give the individual a right to refuse such use of their personal data:

• at the time the data is collected (they must be given an "opt-out" at this stage)
• they must be given the option to opt-out on every subsequent marketing message.

For the sake of clarity, the "opt-out" must be free of charge.You must also make clear to the individual:

• who you are
• where you obtained the individual's personal data (where this is not obvious).

How You Can Use Email Marketing With Customers

If you have obtained contact details during the course of a sale, you can market to these individuals by email ONLY if the following conditions are met:

• what you’re marketing is similar to that which you sold to the customer at the time you obtained their contact details
• At the time you collected the details, you gave the customer the opportunity to object, in an easy manner and without charge.
• Each time you send a marketing message, you give the customer the right to object to receipt of further messages
• The sale occurred in the past twelve months OR you’ve sent an electronic marketing communication to that person in that twelve month period - if the subscriber fails to unsubscribe, they will be deemed to have remained opted-in for a twelve month period from the date of issue to them of the most recent marketing electronic mail.

How You Can Use Email Marketing With Non-Customers

You can’t! Unless you have explicitly obtained the prior consent of that individual to the receipt of such messages.

How You Can Market To Business Contacts (Customers and non Customers)

You can market to a business contact unless the subscriber has notified you that they do not consent to the receipt of such communications.

For more information about the rules governing electronic marketing please seeRegulation 13 of the Electronic Privacy Regulations.

If you have any question or clarifications on above, please leave a comment below and I’d be happy to respond.