Tag Archive for: Privacy Laws

Lead Liaison

Lead Liaison Announces Commitment to GDPR

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Dallas, Texas – Lead Liaison, a leading marketing and sales automation solutions provider, announces their commitment to compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which goes into effect on May 25, 2018.

The GDPR is an updated European regulation which replaces the 1995 EU Data Protection Directive (DPD). It enhances the protection of personal data of citizens in the European Union (EU) and increases the obligations on organizations who collect or process personal data. It applies to businesses inside of the EU, as well as businesses worldwide that deal with any residents of the EU.

As the May 2018 deadline approaches, Lead Liaison’s focus has been on proactive GDPR compliance efforts. They have enhanced their Privacy Policy and added more information on GDPR and how it applies to businesses across the world. Lead Liaison is also Privacy Shield certified under the EU-U.S. and Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield Frameworks. Read more about that here. They offer a Data Architecture, Privacy, and Security Policy, found on their Security and Scalability page which outlines compliance processes (i.e. encrypting data, etc.) to customers, and they have put mechanisms into place, like a “delete data” function, to satisfy data subject requests.

“We recognize that data can travel well beyond the borders of the EU,” says Jen Worsham, Director of Marketing. “We are committed to EU clients and making their data as secure as possible. We feel confident that data subjects will feel protected throughout their engagement with us, however we have put the resources and protocols in place to process and respond to disputes, if needed.”

Lead Liaison is also committed to helping customers address GDPR requirements for their own client base. They are proactively updating their software capabilities to include thirteen distinct features that help clients comply with regulations. Highlights include Privacy Settings, a Consent Log, a Consent Manager, and a Data Subject Request facility. Consolidated Privacy Settings will be included on every database record, which will help satisfy GDPR requirements by keeping information such as Do Not Email, Do Not Call, etc. A Consent Log will track all consent requests (to include Erasure, Rectification, Access, Portability, etc.) via Lead Liaison’s new Data Subject Request facility.

Gaining consent is a crucial aspect of GDPR. Having a proper consent management process, or even having one at all, could be enough to keep the target off a company’s back. Their new Consent Manager will help businesses initiate Consent Requests (such as for the purpose of analytics, marketing, or personalization) by region, with pre-configured GDPR regions readily available for use. Consent can be reviewed and changed by Data Subjects at any time after providing initial consent.

Lead Liaison is also introducing some web form enhancements. Since Lead Liaison’s technology can automatically recognize a website visitor coming from a country in the EU, businesses can selectively and automatically display opt-in features inline with their web form. In addition to that, Lead Liaison is working on a feature for Opt-In Tracking. For example, if a website visitor is identified as being from an EU country, Lead Liaison clients will be able to trigger a prompt to confirm consent to collect personal information for analytics purposes. These new features give Lead Liaison’s clients, known as the “Controllers” in GDPR speak, the opportunity to adjust their compliance level as they see fit.

A complete outline of what Lead Liaison is doing about GDPR can be found here. To learn more about Lead Liaison solutions, visit https://www.leadliaison.com/platform-overview/.

About Lead Liaison
Lead Liaison provides cloud-based sales and marketing automation solutions that helps businesses accelerate revenue by attracting, converting, closing and retaining more prospects. Filling a void in the small pool of marketing automation providers that focus on marketing-centric functionality, Lead Liaison gives equal focus to sales providing sophisticated visitor tracking and additional website engagement tools to boost sales effectiveness. Lead Liaison blends ease-of-use, a flexible business model, deep external integration, marketing across social, web, mobile, email and offline channels and powerful functionality, all specifically tailored for mid-sized businesses, into a single platform, called Revenue Generation Software®. Lead Liaison is headquartered in Allen, Texas, near Dallas. For more information, visit http://www.leadliaison.com or call 1-800-89-LEADS (895-3237).

Lead Liaison

Data is More Secure Than Ever with Lead Liaison’s Participation in the Privacy Shield

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Lead LiaisonAllen, TX – Sales and marketing software firm, Lead Liaison, solidifies inclusion in EU-U.S. and Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield Frameworks to increase data security for international clients.

The Privacy Shield Framework complies with European Union and Swiss data protection requirements when transferring personal data in and out of the United States. In order to comply, US-based organizations must certify themselves with the Department of Commerce, as well as publicly commit to comply with the Privacy Shield Program’s requirements. Once this public commitment has been made, it becomes enforceable under US law, under Section 5 of the FTC Act.

The Department of Commerce released this Fact Sheet, which covers the protections provided and how the program works.

This is important for Lead Liaison’s international clients because the Privacy Shield replaces the European Union’s Safe Harbor Decision, which asserted that the US provide adequate privacy protections to meet EU’s standards. This accomplishment demonstrates that Lead Liaison cares greatly about their clients, and that their clients’ privacy is a high priority.

Lead Liaison’s business in Europe is growing at an all-time high. It was a necessary step to help protect European customers and further increase their confidence in Lead Liaison’s ability to manage their important sales and marketing data.

Jen Worsham, Director of Client Relations, said this about the compliance, “We understand that Europe is a fast-growing market for our company and respect that EU businesses must adhere to strict standards. We are working together to manage data in the safest manner possible.”

Lead Liaison has updated their Privacy Policy, found at http://www.leadliaison.com/about/privacy-policy/, to reflect participation in the Privacy Shield Frameworks.

About the Privacy Shield Agreement Model

The EU-U.S. and Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield Frameworks were designed by the U.S. Department of Commerce and the European Commission and Swiss Administration to provide companies on both sides of the Atlantic with a mechanism to comply with data protection requirements when transferring personal data from the European Union and Switzerland to the United States in support of transatlantic commerce.

About Lead Liaison
Lead Liaison provides cloud-based sales and marketing automation solutions that helps businesses accelerate revenue by attracting, converting, closing and retaining more prospects. Filling a void in the small pool of marketing automation providers that focus on marketing-centric functionality, Lead Liaison gives equal focus to sales providing sophisticated visitor tracking and additional website engagement tools to boost sales effectiveness. Lead Liaison blends ease-of-use, a flexible business model, deep external integration, marketing across social, web, mobile, email and offline channels and powerful functionality, all specifically tailored for mid-sized businesses, into a single platform, called Revenue Generation Software®. Lead Liaison is headquartered in Allen, Texas, near Dallas. For more information, visit http://www.leadliaison.com or call 1-800-89-LEADS (895-3237).

Lead Liaison

When Visitor Tracking Violates the Law

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Where Visitor Tracking Violates the LawMake sure you understand where visitor tracking violates the law. Utter the term “sharing data” and most IT groups cringe.   Your legal team pulls out their cease and desist demands.  Your customers collectively scream “hell no”. Your company might be subjecting themselves to being involved in a lawsuit, such as what happened to Facebook in this lawsuit. The lawsuit stated Facebook violated Right of Publicity, Right of Privacy laws and consumer protection laws in California by sharing members’ personal information with others for commercial purposes.

Now ask your sale and marketing team if they like the concept of opening up your CRM and sharing your contacts with your competitors and anyone else.  Would you knowingly do this? Is your current provide sharing data for commercial reasons similar to Facebook and also in the state of California?

If you are using a number of “Visitor Tracking” aka Visitor Identification tools, you are likely doing exactly that!  Here is how it works:

Your company invests money in a technology that helps you create relationships with individual visitors to your website usually by putting a “cookie” on an individual’s device when they fill out a form on your site (as an example).   That allows you to know that “Customer: Sarah Smith” is on your site; and you can help her find the information that she cares about in less time, customize her experience, or as a way to trigger future discussions.   In short, Customer: Sarah Smith is happy to have this personalized experience with your company.

The problem arises when Competitor “X” decides to invest in the same Visitor tracking product.   The Visitor tracking provider will sell their ability to track more visitors than their competitors.   How do they do that?   Simple: they violate Right of Publicity and Right of Privacy laws.  When a prospect that you have identified goes to Competitor “X”’s site they are searching the customer’s computer for all cookies they added regardless of the source.   Thus, they are using your data to 1.) Help them sell their software to your competitors 2.) Help your competitors identify competitive opportunities against your company.

It gets worse.   Many of these visitor tracking companies are touting their ability to provide email addresses along with the names of the people identified.  Most won’t tell you if they secured this email because a visitor opted in via one of your forms, or if they “borrowed” the data from one of your competitors.   That makes it very difficult (and often illegal) for you to contact these people through automated email methods since they have never opted-in to receive email from you.  In fact, those that HAVE opted-in may become polluted.

How do you avoid hurting your company, and helping your competition?

  1. Make sure your Visitor Identification provider is not sharing data amongst its customers
  2. Make sure the source of all email triggered communications are segmented to only people that have opted-in to receive messages from your organization
  3. Demand that your provider indemnifies you against willful data breaches and “sharing” of data with any other companies
  4. Make sure your provider understands they could be violating Right of Publicity, Right of Privacy and consumer protection laws

The bottom line is that while it may be alluring at first to go with a company that shows you the most name/email addresses in their daily reports of site visitors, there are a number of other marketing techniques that can be employed to keep your company safe and within the guidelines of the law.