With the enforcement of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) less than a month away, it is of the utmost importance that agents read between the lines when considering the most appropriate GDPR strategy for them.

Many agents are in danger of reading what they want to read when it comes to the GDPR.

This has certainly become apparent when considering using legitimate interests as the lawful basis for processing data for direct marketing.

Many agents would have been encouraged by the updated information released by the Information Commissioner’s Office regarding the use of legitimate interests. However, the danger of inappropriate usage resides in overlooking the accompanying contextual information.

For many businesses, there must have been a collective sigh of relief when it became apparent that legitimate interests might be appropriate to use for marketing. However, the ‘soft opt-in’ relationship enforces a set of stringent rules that agents need to be aware of.

On the face of it, using legitimate interests under the criteria of a ‘soft opt-in’ relationship seems straightforward; ‘the contact has bought – or negotiated to buy – a similar product or service from you in the past.’

It’s reasonable to assume that most agents will look at their existing data and conclude that the ‘soft opt-in’ relationship applies.

However, regardless of whether the contact bought – or negotiated to buy – a similar product or service from you in the past, if you did not give the contact a way to opt-out of receiving marketing information from you at the point of registration and in any subsequent messages that you sent to them, it is going to be extremely difficult to make a successful case for using legitimate interests.

When you do your Legitimate Interests Assessment, it will be problematic to obtain a desired outcome if you have never offered the contact a way to opt-out of receiving marketing messages from you in the past.

Agents now have less than a month to think about how they discussed marketing in the past, because if they are planning to rely on legitimate interests and they haven’t correctly registered their contacts in the first place, they may be putting themselves in a very dangerous position.

• Richard Combellack is chief commercial officer at BriefYourMarket which has some limited spaces for agents available at its free GDPR roadshows. Register your interest here: https://www.briefyourmarket.com/roadshow