I recently received an email from an Educational establishment. I, like most people receive business emails on a daily basis, some I've signed up to and others are just spam from businesses trying to interest me in their products and services. I don't generally have a problem with this as long as there's a way for me to unsubscribe and the emails don't come through all the time.

However, on this occasion there was a serious issue in that my email address, along with all the other names and addresses of the people who had been sent the email were visible for all to see as they had been added to the CC (Carbon Copy) field. It's wasn't the most serious intrusion, as there were only a handful of addresses on the emal but depending on the type and size of the organisation, disclosure of email addresses in this way might raise real privacy issues. The Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA) helps to protect privacy rights by creating a set of rules for those who handle personal data and by giving individuals a number of rights over their personal data and the way it is handled.

In addition any organisation that stores and uses personal data relating to identifiable living individuals, either on a computer or in a paper filing system, is a "data controller" for the purposes of the DPA. Data controllers are obliged to handle personal data in accordance with the data-protection principles. The first principle is that data must be processed fairly and lawfully, which requires any processing (including disclosure) to be done either with the consent of the individual or in order to fulfil legal obligations such as contractual obligations.

As this was a marketing email trying to sell a business course, it is also governed by the privacy and electronic communications regulations 2003. These regulations provide that email marketing messages should not be sent to individuals without their express permission unless all the following criteria are met: The marketer has obtained your details through a sale or negotiations for a sale.

The messages are about similar products or services offered by the sender.

You were given an opportunity to refuse the marketing when your details were collected and, if you did not refuse, you were given a simple way to opt out in every future communication.

We use email marketing software to combat the two issues described above. Firstly, when our clients create a newsletter they aren't tasked with the job of manually adding in email addresses these are cleverly managed in lists. The client simply selects the list they want to send to, when the email newsletter is sent the recipients can see their own email address and that's it.

The majority of our clients have access to the email marketing software and have the ability to manage their subscription list. The benefit of this is when they import new mailing lists they're clearing presented with the permissions they must have to use the email addresses. In addition to the permissions outlined above these are: They opted in via your web site They completed an offline form and indicated they wanted to be emailed They gave you their business card They purchased something off you in the last 2 years In addition to this they're also clearly told when they can't use details: You obtained the email addresses from a third party You scraped or “copy and pasted” the addresses from the Internet You haven’t emailed that address for more than 2 years Email marketing can be a simple and effective marketing tool. Hydrant offer a hosted email marketing solution that ensures that you operate within these laws, protecting your customers data and handling the subscription process in a way that ensures the recipient opts-in to receiving your emails and has the opportunity to unsubscribe if they wish.

One of the frustrations with many marketing activities is that it can be very hard to tell what is working, and what is just costing money. Using our solution to conduct email marketing, you can see very quickly what is working, and what is not. It provides graphs and easy to understand data about who is opening, reading and acting on your email marketing so you can make the best from it. If something isn’t working, they’ll find out and be able to tweak it immediately, at low cost. This is a potentially huge saver of time and money.