All marketing comes with responsibility and rules to follow. Whether you’re independently managing your education marketing or working with a supplier, it’s important to make sure you’re always taking a compliant approach. There are two key areas you need to understand:

• GDPR – General Data Protection Regulation
• PECR – The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations

What they mean in practice

GDPR

You need to make sure the data you use for your education marketing campaigns is processed lawfully and transparently, that it’s always relevant to education roles and contexts, you only process and use what you need to deliver your campaigns, you manage it securely and you review your data on a regular basis.

PECR

PECR contains specific rules for electronic marketing. In B2B marketing, unsolicited marketing emails can generally be sent to corporate subscribers without prior consent. This includes many organisations operating within the education sector. Different rules can apply to sole traders and certain types of partnerships, so it’s important to understand who you are contacting. You should make it clear who the email is from, provide a clear and easy way to opt out and promptly action all opt-outs and objections.

What’s allowed (and what isn’t)

To delve deeper, here’s some further information on what you can and can’t do:

You can send relevant campaigns to teachers

Every campaign you send should be relevant to the recipient e.g. will your offering help to streamline their workload, improve the learning experience for their pupils etc. When processing teachers’ contact information and data, you need an appropriate lawful basis under UK GDPR. For B2B direct marketing of this kind, legitimate interests will often be an appropriate basis, provided you can demonstrate that your processing is necessary and that the individual’s rights and interests do not override your legitimate interests. For example, you might be contacting teachers to inform them about an upcoming educational webinar that will support their curriculum delivery.

A legitimate interest can be commercial – it does not have to demonstrate a wider public benefit. However, the relevance of your product or service to the recipient’s professional role, their reasonable expectations and the potential impact of the marketing should all be considered.

Process education data lawfully and transparently

Only collect the data you need to fulfil your identified purpose and lawful basis in contacting teachers. And regularly and thoroughly update your education database, ensuring anyone who has opted out or objected to direct marketing is appropriately suppressed from future campaigns. You need to have a clear and lawful process for processing education data that you can easily explain to anyone who asks.

Where you rely on legitimate interests, you should be able to demonstrate why the processing is necessary and why your interests are not overridden by the rights and interests of the individual.

We recommend completing a Legitimate Interest Assessment (LIA). It’s a straightforward document that helps to demonstrate your compliance. (We can provide a template for you to make it quick and easy to complete, just let us know if you need any help). When you’ve completed it, be sure to save it somewhere accessible within your organisation for reference and review it periodically or whenever your processing activities materially change.

Remember that professional information can still be personal data. A teacher’s name, job title and identifiable work email address may be personal data even where it is publicly available on a school website. Public availability doesn’t remove your UK GDPR obligations, so you still need an appropriate lawful basis and should provide the required privacy information.

Follow-up with teachers who reply directly to your email campaign

If a teacher replies directly to your campaign, you can of course respond to their enquiry or continue the conversation. However, a reply doesn’t automatically amount to consent to receive all future marketing. If you want to include their details in future marketing campaigns, you still need to ensure that you have an appropriate lawful basis and comply with PECR where applicable. Always make sure recipients have a clear way to object to or opt out of future direct marketing.

Send campaigns directly to schools or through an education marketing agency

As long as you’re using accurate education data and only processing data you actually need to deliver the campaign, you can send campaigns directly to schools where you have an appropriate lawful basis and the relevant PECR requirements are met.

You just always need to include a clear ‘from name’ (e.g. Buzz Education), your postal address and, if your email has been sent by a marketing company, state where the email is sent from e.g. ‘This email is sent by [Company] on behalf of [Your company]’.

Using an education marketing agency doesn’t remove an organisation’s own compliance responsibilities. Depending on the circumstances, both the organisation whose products or services are being promoted and the organisation sending the campaign can have responsibilities under PECR and UK GDPR.

You can’t:

• Process education data unlawfully or without transparency
• Send irrelevant campaigns to teachers
• Send campaigns without an opt-out option – marketing emails should always provide a clear, simple and effective way for recipients to opt out of future marketing. An unsubscribe link is generally the clearest way to achieve this. Once someone objects to direct marketing, their personal data must no longer be used for that purpose.
• Send campaigns that are unclear who the sender is – you need to state your ‘from name’ e.g. Sally at EducationWorkshops or just the company name, EducationWorkshops. You also need to include your postal address and who the campaign is sent from clearly.
• Share our education data with another company without making us aware of how it will be used.

Further information – You can learn more on GDPR here and further information on PECR here.

Final note

GDPR and PECR don’t prevent education suppliers from marketing to schools, but they do require organisations to market responsibly. Understanding your lawful basis, who you’re contacting, how their data is being used and how they can object or opt out is essential to running compliant education marketing campaigns.

If you have any questions on either area, feel free to reach out to our education marketing specialists. They’ll be able to share their expert advice on how to ensure your campaigns are compliant.