by Nick Clark 
Every day we speak to companies using their data to market to their customers. It’s how we have all carried out our day to day prospecting for some time. But with less than 12 months before a fundamental shift in the law takes place, I worry that many companies are still ill-prepared for what is about to happen.
We have developed procedures and practices to help companies transition into this new way of marketing using Salesforce & Pardot and our Head of Pardot Sarah Kelleher has also written a guide which you can find here.
The time to start planning is NOW. Leave it too much longer and you could find your pot of legal, marketable prospects is very small…
Under GDPR, these rules are now standardised across the EU and have been significantly toughened. Any breach must be reported to a local supervisory authority within 72 hours of the business being aware of the issue.
Failure to notify can result in a penalty fine of up to €10m or 2% of global turnover. Negligent or intentional violation of GDPR can result in a fine of up to €20m or 4% of turnover.
Anyone who thinks the EU wouldn’t use these powers just has to look at the €2.4bn fine recently issued by the EU to Google for favouring its own results in internet shopping searches.