Privacy policy.

1. Who we are

We are Flowd – a marketing agency based in Manchester, UK. We provide marketing services to a global client base. The majority of our data processing is that of publicly available contact details that we use to identify relevant sales prospects for clients.

This privacy policy aims to give you information on how Flowd collects and processes your personal data through your use of this website, including any data you may provide through this website.

This website is not intended for children and we do not knowingly collect data relating to children.

A&M Media Ltd T/a Flowd is the controller and responsible for your personal data (collectively referred to as “Flowd”, “We”, “us” or “our” in this policy).

We take privacy very seriously and are always available to address privacy concerns via the contact details below.

By post to our Data Protection Officer – Flowd, Calico, 55 Mosley St, Manchester M2 3HQ, or, 300 Creek View Road, Suite 209, Newark, Delaware, DE 19711, USA

By email to our Data Protection Officer – chris@flowd.co.uk

You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK regulator for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact us in the first instance.

2. What personal data we collect, how its collected and why we collect it

Personal Data

Personal data or personal information means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).

We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you which we have grouped together:

Identity Data includes first name, last name and title. Flowd collects, processes, and stores identity data as part of email marketing campaigns executed on behalf of Flowd, and clients. Flowd collects this information from clients who have signed up to use Flowd’s services during Flowd’s sales process, client onboarding process, and throughout the duration of a client’s term with Flowd. For example, Flowd will need to know the identity data of the person/s Flowd will send email campaigns on behalf of.

Contact Data includes address, email address and phone number. Flowd collects, processes, and stores identity data as part of email marketing campaigns executed on behalf of Flowd, and clients. When contact data is collected and processed as part of an email campaign for a client, Flowd acts as a joint Data Controller and Data Processor. The client acts as a joint Data Controller.

Financial Data includes bank account and payment card details. Flowd collects and stores financial data for clients that have signed up to use Flowd’s services. This information is not shared outside the organisation unless required by law.

Transaction Data includes details about payments to and from you and other details of services you have purchased from us. This data is not shared outside the organisation, unless required for legal or debt-collection purposes.

Technical Data includes internet protocol (IP address), your login data, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform, and other technology on the devices you use to access this website. Technical data

Profile Data includes your username and password, purchases or orders made by you, your interests, preferences, feedback and survey responses. Flowd may keep a record of auto-generated username and passwords clients use to login to Flowd’s portal and other platofrms Flowd provides for clients. Where passwords are stored by Flowd, they are held in a secure database.

Usage Data includes includes information about how you use our website, products and services. Flowd utilises platforms like Google Analytics and Hubspot for WordPress, which collect website usage data. More information on these platforms and the cookies used can be found on Flowd’s Cookie Policy.

Marketing and Communications Data includes your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences.

We also collect, use and share Aggregated Data such as statistical or demographic data for any purpose. Aggregated Data could be derived from your personal data but is not considered personal data in law as this data will not directly or indirectly reveal your identity. For example, we may aggregate your Usage Data to calculate the percentage of users accessing a specific website feature. However, if we combine or connect Aggregated Data with your personal data so that it can directly or indirectly identify you, we treat the combined data as personal data which will be used in accordance with this privacy policy.

We do not collect any Special Categories of Personal Data about you (this includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health, and genetic and biometric data). Nor do we collect any information about criminal convictions and offences.

If you fail to provide personal data:

Where we need to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of a contract we have with you, and you fail to provide that data when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have or are trying to enter into with you (for example, to provide you with goods or services). In this case, we may have to cancel a product or service you have with us but we will notify you if this is the case at the time.

We use different methods to collect data from and about you including through:

Comments

When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymised string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Media

If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

3. Analytics

How we use your data

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:

Where we need to perform the service agreement we are about to enter into or have entered into with you.

Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.

Where we need to comply with a legal obligation.

Please refer to the glossary below to find out more about the types of lawful basis that we will rely on to process your personal data.

How long we retain your data

We will only retain your personal data for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or reporting requirements. We may retain your personal data for a longer period in the event of a complaint or if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of litigation in respect to our relationship with you.

For example, if you opt out of receiving email communications from Flowd, we may keep a record of your email address indefinitely to ensure you are not contacted again.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or other requirements.

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognise and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

What rights you have over your data

Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data. If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we could refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it could take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

You can ask us or third parties to stop sending you marketing messages at any time by contacting us at any time.

Where you opt out of receiving these marketing messages, this will not apply to personal data provided to us as a result of a service purchase, service experience or other transactions.

Where we send your data

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.

Several of our external third parties are based outside the UK so their processing of your personal data will involve a transfer of data outside the UK.

Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the UK, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:

We will only transfer your personal data to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data.
Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts approved for use in the UK which give personal data the same protection it has in the UK.

Please contact us by email if you require any further information.

4. GDPR/Legal

What is GDPR?

The General Data Protection Regulation (EU/UK) (GDPR) is a regulation in EU law on data protection and privacy in the European Union (EU/UK) and the European Economic Area (EEA). It also addresses the transfer of personal data outside the EU/UK and EEA areas. The GDPR’s primary aim is to enhance individuals’ control and rights over their personal data and to simplify the regulatory environment for international business. The regulation contains provisions and requirements related to the processing of personal data of individuals who are located in the EEA, and applies to any enterprise—regardless of its location and the data subjects’ citizenship or residence—that is processing the personal information of individuals inside the EEA.

Flowd’s Compliance

In addition to appointing a compliance officer to oversee our adherence to the rules, Flowd have utilised 3rd party compliance expertise to audit and advise on best practice. This allows us to assure clients that GDPR best practices are strictly observed wherever possible, at all times.

Flowd’s relationship with you

It’s important to note that both Flowd and the client (you) have responsibility at all times to adhere to GDPR guidelines. Even though Flowd is the service provider, we are both responsible for choosing who to target, what data to use and collect, and the messages we send out. We outline some of our data practices in our service agreement.

Are Flowd’s campaigns GDPR/CAN-SPAM compliant?

Cold email marketing is not strictly permitted under UK/EU GDPR or US CAN-SPAM regulations. In some geographies within the EU, national law permits the use of cold email marketing for the purposes of business development, as prior consent is required.

In the UK, US, and the majority of the EU, prior consent to email is not required, provided certain conditions are met. Because Flowd conducts strictly B2B (Business-to-Business) email marketing, prior explicit consent is not required from recipients.

In the UK, the ICO classes employees of legally-registered businesses as ‘Corporate Subscribers’. Because of this, the PECR rules on electronic marketing do not apply. Flowd includes a valid and free of charge opt-out mechanism in-line with PECR guidelines for any prospect who wishes not to be contacted further.

In the US, the CAN-SPAM act does not prohibit B2B cold email marketing but provides several guidelines on how to structure emails. Flowd includes a valid and free of charge opt-out mechanism in-line with CAN-SPAM guidelines for any prospect who wishes not to be contacted further.

GDPR includes several provisions regarding the collection and storage of data. We take great care operationally to ensure that data is collected and stored properly. We also conduct an in-depth assessment of a client’s product, service, or offering to ensure that when paired with our outreach, all GDPR and PECR guidelines are met. A crucial part of this assessment is the Legitimate Interest Assessment (LIA). This is essentially a short series of questions we ask in our onboarding process to determine 3 main points.

Identifying a key interest of both you and the prospects. It’s important that we’re delivering relevant emails to prospects that have a reason to be interested in your service, product, or offering. This can include commercial interest, personal interest, or broader societal interest. Things like increasing revenue are common.
Show that the data processing is necessary to achieve it. For Flowd’s outreach, we believe this is necessary to deliver the most efficient, safe, and successful outreach.
Balance it against the prospect’s personal freedoms, expectations, and rights. Would the prospect expect to be contacted in this way? Would an individual with a public Linkedin profile and job role expect to be messaged about a product or service that could benefit them or their business?

If Flowd determines that your planned campaign/outreach would not meet these criteria for LIA within the scope of GDPR, we cannot support the activity subject to GDPR guidelines.

PECR and sending of B2B messages

In the UK, GDPR controls the storage and processing of personal data. Sending messages is actually regulated under the Privacy and Electronic communications Regulations (PECR). This tells us the requirements for business communication: “You can email or text any corporate body (a company, Scottish partnership, limited liability partnership or government body)”. Flowd include opt-out options in our outreach so that recipients can block further contact should they be unhappy with being contacted.

Flowd Employees

All our employees undergo GDPR, PECR, and compliance training. Every Flowd employee understands the importance of compliance for both Flowd and our clients, and we also make sure employees are aware of the consequences associated with failure to comply.

Flowd Data Security

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

Your responsibilities as a client

Flowd takes detailed care to ensure all regulatory guidelines and rules are adhered to, However, as a client, you have the responsibility to follow the relevant regulatory frameworks in your country and alert Flowd if you see changes that need to be made. It is not possible for Flowd to constantly monitor all aforementioned frameworks in all countries at the same time, and this is why you as the client are crucial in ensuring compliance.

5. Summary

Flowd has worked tirelessly to develop an operational framework that ensures good practice and data privacy compliance for our clients. All of our outreach is naturally compliant, and our hyper-personalisation specific to each prospect is further proof that the emails are relevant, specific, and respect the rights and expectations of the recipient individual.

Glossary

LAWFUL BASIS

Legitimate Interest means the interest of our business in conducting and managing our business to enable us to give you the best service/product and the best and most secure experience. We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative) and your rights before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests. We do not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law). You can obtain further information about how we assess our legitimate interests against any potential impact on you in respect of specific activities by contacting us.

Performance of Contract means processing your data where it is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you are a party or to take steps at your request before entering into such a contract.

Comply with a legal obligation means processing your personal data where it is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation that we are subject to.

THIRD PARTIES

External Third Parties

Service providers acting as processors who provide IT and system administration services.
Professional advisers acting as processors or joint controllers including lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers who provide consultancy, banking, legal, insurance and accounting services.
HM Revenue & Customs, regulators and other authorities acting as processors or joint controllers based in the United Kingdom who require reporting of processing activities in certain circumstances.

YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS

You have the right to:

Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.

Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.

Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.

Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.

Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios:

If you want us to establish the data’s accuracy.
Where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it.
Where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.
You have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.

Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.

Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.

Privacy Policy.