Marketing for IFAs and other Advisers
Has GDPR made things difficult for IFAs?
The battlefield of GDPR for IFAs when sending our quarterly newsletters may not be as complicated as you first thought. And the good news is we can even help you along the way with obtaining permission for marketing emails.
We produce quarterly newsletters inclusive of your monthly fee. They are FCA compliance approved. But has GDPR made marketing these IFA newsletters more difficult for you?
Newsletters have always been a popular as a marketing tool for businesses. They provide an opportunity for financial advisers to interact with their clients, both reminding them of who you are and what services you offer as an independent financial adviser (IFA).
Have your customers given consent?
The introduction of the GDPR, will make it necessary for IFA businesses to actively seek explicit permission from their customers opting in for marketing materials.
These opt in requests cannot be written into terms and conditions, IFAs must ensure that potential customers or leads are given clear information as to what their data will be used for, how it will be handled and what subsequent contact to expect.
Often this can be (and may have been) done at the first client meeting.
Do you need GDPR consent to send your IFA quarterly newsletters?
For your quarterly newsletters newsletters, the simple answer is most probably not as long as they haven't opted out from receiving marketing emails.
Because your IFA newsletter it is of legitimate interest and isn't marketing products, merely informing them of relevant financial topics. But it will depend on what else you add into your email.
Now, if they're not a customer but a prospective customer and out of the blue, they start getting marketing emails from you, then obviously, you will need to look at the grounds of legitimate interest a lot closer.
Simple GDPR - Data Protection marketing guidelines
Only if consent was obtained in a way compliant with the GDPR before, can the data still be used. This means that if consent was not obtained, or was obtained by way of a pre-ticked box, or is an opt-out, then consent should be asked again.
You could organise a reactivation campaign and send an email to everyone in your database, asking to consent to the processing of their data. And yes, this could lead to a long list of refusals – but think about this in a glass-half-full way: it will keep the people actually interested involved, whilst weeding out those who are not.
If you're worried that your pre-existing marketing databases may not meet the GDPR standard we can set up a page on your website to make this process easier for you.
Let us add a form to your IFA website
We can add a marketing permission form (You can email your existing clients a link) to make your life easier.
