The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, becomes effective on May 25, 2018.

We’ve been periodically interviewing David Fowler, Act-On’s head of privacy, compliance and deliverability, about the regulation, which he describes as the biggest change to EU data protection law in a generation. It applies to the EU’s 510+ million citizens, as well as any business doing business with them, regardless of where they are based. If you are a marketer doing business in Europe, or any of your customers are EU citizens, then GDPR applies to you.

Episode 30 was our first conversation with David about GDPR and offers a good introduction.

“What I would be doing now as a marketer in your preparation efforts (when this thing goes live in May of next year, there’s going to be no grace period). So, every piece of data you have on your file come May of 2018 will have to be compliant the day it goes live,” David said. “You should start thinking about how you either re-permission or get to the point where you start to disclose different things about the individuals as you get ready for the GDPR implementation. So, re-permission your lists, get your consent in order, start talking about disclosures, and that kind of thing. And so that’s what you should start to be sort of embracing today.”

You can also listen to Ep. 54 | What You Need to Know About GDPR’s Data Protection Officer, too, or visit our GDPR hub to learn more.