If you still don’t know that something happened on 25 May that affected electronic communications then you you don’t use e-mail or the Internet (and then you won’t get to read this anyway ;-) ) or maybe you have never bought anything on the Internet and have not subscribed to any newsletters (apart from the Dublin Event Guide :-) ).
In an over-hyped panic state many companies and organisations who dod have clear permissions from their customers/subscribers asked ALL their subscribers to re-subscribe. Others who had mailing lists that were decades old and that were populated in ways that would not be compatible with the new GDPR rules had no choice. I got hundreds if e-mails! Initially senders asked me to re-subscribe but then it all changed and they mails were a mere notification of the new GDPR rules.
I had looked into the new regulations well in advance and since everyone who gets the Dublin Event Guide had to request to get added and then had to confirm that they REALLY want to get added, I have clear documentation of the request so I didn’t have to bother you again. But imagine this:
A typical mailing list has an opening rate of 10-40%. That means 10-40% of the recipients open a mail. The rest is too busy right now and plans to open at a later stage (but might never get to it) OR they have lost interest in the information OR they are not actively using that mail account anymore. So if a company has 10,000 subscribers and they did send the GDPR mail “Please confirm your details, otherwise we will have to delete you.” They already lost 6000 – 9000 subscribers the moment they hit the SEND button. Let’s be generous and say they ONLY lost 7000. Now the 3000 remaining people would have confirm that they still want to receive the newsletter. But since all mails arrived on one day and people got annoyed with so many re-subscribe mails. many decided to take the opportunity to get rid of some unwanted newsletters. So where normally maybe 40-50% would have confirmed, I wouldn’t be surprised if on Wednesday and Thursday of this week only about 20-30% actually did subscribe (and that number could still be too optimistic.) Let’s continue with 25%.
So after one e-mail and the introduction of GDPR the company has just 750 people left on their list! From 10,000 to 750 with one e-mail! That is an absolute disaster for a company that depends on online sales or on online promotions to achieve online or offline sales.
The result will be a highly probably loss in sales and revenue and because the company might have lost the “innovateability” that they had when they started originally and also runs on higher costs in comparison to the start-up days, I wouldn’t be surprised if companies will have to close! :-O
An odd and difficult situation. But it is too late now. :-O
