Direct marketing guidance

Guidance summary

• Direct marketing is important. It can help you grow your businesses and further your aims, add value to the customer experience and increase trust and confidence in your brand or organisation.
• This guidance will help you do direct marketing responsibly. It is a practical guide for those conducting direct marketing or those involved in it. It explains what you have to do to comply with the law and gives you good practice recommendations. It covers the following steps:

Step 1: Identify

Does what you want to do count as direct marketing? Remember, direct marketing covers promoting aims and ideals as well as selling products and services.

Step 2: Plan

Take a data protection by design approach, planning how you will protect people’s information from the start. Think about what information you want to use and how you want to get your direct marketing to people. And make sure you have a data protection reason (“lawful basis") for your direct marketing.

Step 3: Collect

Collect information for direct marketing fairly and clearly explain to people how you plan to use their information.

Step 4: Respect

Always respect people’s preferences. People have an absolute right to object to or opt out of direct marketing at any time.