GDPR for email outreach
The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is the EU/UK data-protection law that governs how you process personal data, including email addresses, of people in those regions. For cold B2B outreach it generally requires a lawful basis — most commonly legitimate interest — plus transparency, an easy opt-out, and honoring data-subject rights like access and erasure.
How it works
You must identify a lawful basis before processing someone's data. Legitimate interest can support relevant B2B outreach if you document a balancing test, contact people in their professional capacity, are transparent about where you got their data, and provide a simple way to opt out and be forgotten.
Why it matters
GDPR is stricter than U.S. CAN-SPAM and carries large fines (up to the greater of tens of millions of euros or a percentage of global turnover). Emailing EU/UK contacts without a lawful basis and proper opt-out handling is a real legal and financial risk, not a formality.
How Autocloz handles it
Autocloz keeps an auditable consent and suppression record and honors opt-outs and erasure requests across every channel from one suppression engine, so the opt-out and data-subject-rights obligations are enforced consistently rather than tracked by hand.
FAQ
Can I send cold email to EU contacts under GDPR?
Often yes, on a legitimate-interest basis for relevant B2B outreach — but you must document the basis, contact people in their professional role, be transparent about your data source, and offer an easy opt-out. Some member states (and PECR in the UK) add stricter rules.
What is the difference between GDPR and CAN-SPAM?
CAN-SPAM (U.S.) allows unsolicited commercial email with honest headers and a working opt-out. GDPR (EU/UK) regulates personal-data processing more strictly, requiring a lawful basis, transparency and data-subject rights — a higher bar than CAN-SPAM.
Related terms
Cold email deliverability is the share of your outbound cold emails that actually reach the recipient's inbox (not spam, not blocked). It depends on domain authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), sender reputation, mailbox warmup, list hygiene and content — not just whether the email was 'sent'.
DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance) is an email standard that tells receiving mail servers what to do with messages that fail SPF or DKIM checks — and sends you reports. It prevents spoofing of your domain and is now effectively required by Gmail and Yahoo for bulk senders.
SPF (Sender Policy Framework) is an email-authentication standard that lets a domain owner publish, in DNS, the list of mail servers allowed to send email on the domain's behalf. Receiving servers check the sending IP against that list to help detect spoofing and decide whether to trust the message.
DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) is an email-authentication method that attaches a cryptographic signature to each message. The receiving server verifies the signature against a public key in the sender's DNS, proving the message wasn't altered in transit and genuinely came from the signing domain.