I’ve looked into email marketing rules in the past due to working on both eCommerce software platforms and for eCommerce vendors.

As far as my understanding as a non-lawyer goes, a preexisting business relationship is normally interpreted as a customer who has completed a purchase (for example), then being opted in via a ‘soft opt-in’ — as explained by the various information and data regulators.

And the resulting emails would then have to be closely related to whatever item was purchased.

So for example, if I bought a computer from Amazon, they could soft opt-in me into marketing emails relating to computers and computer accessories, but not clothing or gardening tools (for example).

I’m surprised that Criteo is able to get away with claiming browsing a website as a ‘preexisting business relationship’, but I assume that’s because no-one has bothered legally challenging it in the EU yet.

The flip side would be that presumably, I could browse the Sears site, and then under the client section of my business, have a section that lists them under ‘pre-existing business relationships’?

It also seems pretty counter-intuitive from a marketing perspective — I wonder about the response rate compared to how many people instantly delete or flag it as spam?