If you are reading this, a week after the holiday weekend, well done; you have survived the great GDPR email frenzy, which finally reached fever pitch last Friday afternoon.
Did you all get the emails saying “we don’t want to say goodbye” which landed in the inbox on Friday. Did the senders not get the message? Perhaps you had already sent a response to earlier emails which you thought had made it clear that “no” meant “no”, and so a last-ditch effort to keep you on their list, probably for possible onward sale to someone else, did little to endear them to you or me.
There were some strange bits to all this. Firstly, it was very strange to find that many large firms waited till the last minute on Friday afternoon, ahead of a long weekend. If they were looking for positive replies, it was a risky strategy. Second, I’m sure everyone received emails from businesses whom they had never heard of or done business with.
Did this suggest that proof of the sale of email lists is alive and well. I even received a phone call on Tuesday offering me a place on a seminar which would ensure that I could use their appointment making techniques without breaking the law.
One wonders what the cost was (is!) of implementing GDPR across the world, and whether it will actually make any great difference to the storage of our personal data.
So, if your inbox is remarkably clutter free this week, be sure to make the most of it. I don’t think it will stay that way. Oh, and by the way, I am pretty sure the volume of emails in my inbox has NOT decreased!