Don’t panic! But make sure you are ready for GDPR!

Eric Shanfelt, my go-to internet marketing expert, sent out this amazingly useful email to his clients today.  I have his permission to share his private email with the world at large (or at least the audience that reads my posts!).

Eric says:

Before GDPR goes into effect, I wanted to share four excellent resources that will help you navigate all of the changes.

Of course, by now you’re all too aware that GDPR goes into effect in just three days and affects pretty much every publisher and media company even in the United States.

First, I want to tell you … don’t panic. There aren’t EU regulators just sitting there waiting for May 25 to start regulatory action against publishers. It’s also clear that the regulators themselves aren’t ready for GDPR.

But more importantly, I wanted to send out one last email to all of my media and publishing friends with some helpful links and resources as you navigate GDPR.

1) Check out this “Practical Guide to GDPR Compliance” by OptimizePress, a lead-generation plugin developer for WordPress. It is one of the best-written resources that I’ve read thus far on GDPR and contains clear, practical advice. Every publisher should take the time to read this.

2) Read “The Smart Way to Make Opt-in Forms GDPR Compliant” by Thrive Themes, another lead-generation plugin developer for WordPress. We’ve all seen GDPR email opt-in forms that have a ton of checkboxes, but this article shows a very smart alternative that eliminates the checkboxes, while still being compliant.

3) One of the biggest challenges most publishers face is creating a GDPR-compliant privacy and cookie policy. And one of the best tools I’ve seen for this is built by Iubenda. It’s an easy-to-use, drag-and-drop interface and most publishers can set up their policies in about 30 minutes. It costs $27 per year per website, but for that you also get a cookie notification script that you can easily install on your site.

4) Finally, I wanted to tell you about Suzanne Dibble’s amazing GDPR resources. Suzanne is a well-known business lawyer in the UK and has become an expert on GDPR. She has a video library filled with practical information, as well as a very active Facebook group where people are interacting about specific GDPR questions. I have found this to be invaluable recently.

Anyway, I hope these resources help you. Don’t ignore GDPR, but also don’t panic. Start working your way through compliance and feel free to reach out if you’d like to chat about any of these or other digital audience and revenue development issue.

Cheers!

Eric Shanfelt
970-310-3800
eric@emediastrategist.com