An Easy 4-Step Plan to Address GDPR

If you aren’t seeking EU customers

Everyone is freaking out over the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a European Union regulation that strictly governs consumers’ personal data.

According to Martech Today, “GDPR provides protection to EU citizens no matter where their data travels. This means that any company, anywhere, that has a database that includes EU citizens is bound by its rules.”

Multinational or global brands must scramble to comply with the regulations, which go into effect on May 25, 2018. But if you work for a company that does not do business with or seek to collect data from the EU, there are some simple steps you can take to comply with the GDPR.

We recently helped one of our clients – a national restaurant chain – navigate this process by implementing the following steps:

1. 1. Block traffic coming from the EU according to IP address at the server level. This means that when people in the EU try to visit your website, they will be redirected to a page that says their country is blocked from accessing your site. For example, here are some landing pages that top brands have used for similar regulatory issues regarding location.

1. Search your current database for known EU domains (.fr, .it, .de, .eu, etc.). Notify those contacts that you will be removing them from your contact list due to the new regulations, and then do so.
2. If EU visitors are able to access your site (say they are traveling in the US and are using a local IP), you can prevent them from submitting a form by blocking email addresses that use known EU domains.
3. Going forward, put a process in place to constantly scrub and monitor your database to ensure that you have not collected any EU contact information.

By following these simple steps, you should avoid any possible violations of the GDPR – one less thing to worry about.

If you need any help or have any additional questions, we’re here for you. This is what we do. Let’s Talk.