You will have seen the news, I'm sure, about the Marriott data breach.  The number of people details that have been hacked is now at something like 500 million.  Of course, many of us have stayed at Marriott hotels and have become part of their loyalty program.

But here's the problem.

The European GDPR regulations means that if you hold customer data you are responsible and accountable for that data.

From the biggest companies right down to the smallest companies means you are responsible and accountable for that data, with fines of 4% of turnover.  Here at Digital Leadership Associates (DLA) social-experts.net we deleted ours.

Of course, I hear you say, you are not in Europe so GDPR does not matter to you.  But regardless of where you are in the world, if you have Europeans (even just one) in your database, then you are impacted.

Since 25th May 2018 when GDPR became legislation we have seen a total fall off of email marketing, it's pretty much been killed off and the same with cold calling.  In fact any type of push marketing has become null in void.

People are moving to pull marketing, using social media.  Why?  Because the data held on social networks is put there by the users and the social networks are accountable and responsible, not you.

With the GDPR fines in place there is a clear business case.