Privacy Policy

At Smart Insights, we aim to be open about the way our site works to collect user data, we are committed to safeguarding the privacy of our website visitors; this policy sets out how we will treat your personal information.

1.1.1     Data controller

The data controller responsible in respect of the information processed on this website is Smart Insights (Marketing Intelligence) Limited.

If you have any questions about this privacy policy or our treatment of your personal information, please write to us by email to [email protected] or by post to Smart Insights (Marketing Intelligence) Limited, 1 Aire Street, Leeds, LS1 4PR, United Kingdom.

1.1.2     Your rights

It is important for you to understand and be able to exercise your ‘data rights’; in particular, your right to not to have personal data used for direct marketing purposes. Under the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), you have the right to access, modify, and delete your data.

1.1.2.1   Withdrawal of consent including marketing opt-out

You may withdraw consent for data processing at any time, without affecting the lawfulness of processing based on consent before its withdrawal;

You may also instruct us not to process your personal information for marketing purposes. In practice, you will usually either expressly agree in advance to our use of your personal information for marketing purposes, or we will provide you with an opportunity to opt-out of the use of your personal information for marketing purposes.

Our contact details are above should you wish to exercise these important rights.

1.1.2.2   Access to personal data

You may instruct us to provide you with any personal information we hold about you, in relation to information we store on your name, email address, profile information such as company and job title, and your payment history. Following a request we require up to 30 working days to provide you with your information.

We may withhold such personal information to the extent permitted by law.

1.1.2.3   Retention of your data

Information relating to your financial transactions with us will be kept for the period required by relevant UK tax and revenue legislation.

Your personal profile and membership data for will be retained whilst you continue to be an active free or paid member, and for up to 7 years following cessation of membership activity.

In all other cases, we will erase or anonymise your data once it is no longer necessary for the purpose we obtained it for.

1.1.2.4   Changing or erasing data

You may instruct us to change any inaccurate data or to erase data that is no longer required for a specified purpose.

1.1.2.5   Complaints to a supervisory authority

You have a right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority. In the UK, you should first make your complaint to the Information Commissioner. Their contact details are available on their website www.ico.gov.uk.

1.1.3     What information do we collect?

We collect, store and use the following kinds of personal information:

(a) We use Google Analytics to analyse the use of this website, including information about your computer and about your visits to and use of this website (including your IP address, geographical location, browser type and version, operating system, referral source, length of visit, page views, and website navigation). Google Analytics generates statistical and other information about website use by means of cookies, which are stored on users' computers. The information generated relating to our website is used to create reports about the use of the website. Google will store this information. Google's privacy policy is available at: http://www.google.com/privacypolicy.html.

(b) information relating to any transactions carried out between you and us on or in relation to this website, including information relating to any purchases you make of our membership packages - we do not store any credit card or payment method information as part of payment processing during member subscription.

(c) information that you provide to us for registering with us and for subscribing to our website services, email notifications, sms notifications and/or newsletters (including name, email, phone number, job role and communication preferences);

(d) and any other information that you choose to send to us.

Personal information submitted to, and acquired via, this website will be used for the purposes specified in this privacy policy and/or in relevant parts of the website. It is processed in either in accordance with your consent and/or for contractual necessity e.g. your payment information.

1.1.4     Using your personal information

We may use your personal information to:

  1. improve your browsing experience by using your data to profile you and personalise the website;
  2. enable your use of the services available on the website;
  3. send to you goods purchased via the website, and supply to you services purchased via the website;
  4. send statements and invoices to you, and collect payments from you;
  5. share information with business partners who may contact you about topical and relevant information;
  6. send you general (non-marketing) commercial communications;
  7. send you email notifications which you have specifically requested;
  8. send you email notifications promoting our services;
  9. send you sms notifications promoting our services;
  10. send you our newsletter and other marketing communications relating to our business [or the businesses of carefully-selected third parties] which we think may be of interest to you by post or, where you have specifically agreed to this, by email, sms, or similar technology (you can inform us at any time if you no longer require marketing communications);
  11. send you targeted advertising on social media through website retargeting;
  12. deal with enquiries and complaints made by or about you relating to the website;
  13. provide third parties with anonymous statistical information about our users;
  14. administer the website;

Where you submit personal information for publication on our website, we will publish and otherwise use that information in accordance with the license you grant to us.

SmartInsights.com transmits credit card information directly to PayPal.com or Stripe.com. The credit card information is not communicated to our servers. All transactions are protected with SSL encryption. SmartInsights.com does not store credit card numbers after the transmission is complete.

1.1.5     Disclosures

We may disclose information about you to any of our employees, officers, agents, suppliers or subcontractors insofar as reasonably necessary for the purposes as set out in this privacy policy.

Based on your actions on our website e.g. form completion, we will identify trading partners with whom we may share the personal data you have provided.

In addition, we may disclose your personal information:

(a) to the extent that we are required to do so by law;

(b) in connection with any legal proceedings or prospective legal proceedings;

(c) to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights (including providing information to others for the purposes of fraud prevention and reducing credit risk);

(d) to the purchaser (or prospective purchaser) of any business or asset that we are (or are contemplating) selling; and

(e) to any person who we reasonably believe may apply to a court or other competent authority for disclosure of that personal information where, in our reasonable opinion, such court or authority would be reasonably likely to order disclosure of that personal information.

1.1.6     Cookie use

Smartinsights.com uses cookies.

By continuing to use our website, after having been informed about the cookies, you are indicating to us that you consent to the use of cookies as set out in this policy. 

We want to be open about our use of cookies on SmartInsights.com.

As required by the UK interpretation of EU law on Cookies, we have reviewed the cookies used by our service and give advice so that you can manage the use of cookies.

A cookie consists of a piece of text sent by a web server to your web browser, which is then stored by your browser. The information is then sent back to our web server each time your browser requests a page from the server. This enables the web server to identify individual web browsers. It does not contain personally identifiable information such as your name or other personal details – but may enable us to identify and profile your activities if you are logged in to our site.

We use technologies, such as cookies, to customise content and advertising, to provide social media features and to analyse traffic to the site. We also share information about your use of our site with our trusted social media, advertising and analytics partners.

Accessing our free blog content

When you can access our free blog posts, a cookie is placed on your computer by our content management system (CMS) WordPress, which uses a session cookie. This temporary cookie is not used for tracking purposes, it's an essential, "strictly necessary" part of providing content to you through our CMS.

Accessing our member content - cookies are used to remember you are logged-in so you can download documents

We use persistent cookies to enable our website to recognise you when you return to our site. These cookies are essential to use of our web service in recognising your membership status, and as such are permitted by law.

We also use other web services provided by other companies to improve the experience for users of SmartInsights.com and to help us review how we improve our service for users and commercially.

How do I block cookies from these service?

Most browsers allow you to reject all cookies, whilst some browsers allow you to reject just third party cookies.  For example, in Internet Explorer you can refuse all cookies by clicking “Tools”, “Internet Options”, “Privacy”, and selecting “Block all cookies” using the sliding selector.  Blocking all cookies will, however, have a negative impact upon the usability of many websites, including this one.

If you want to manage privacy we recommend you install Ghostery which gives you a chance to learn more about each service it identifies on a site and block their cookies or Scripts. It gives information on how they describe themselves, a link to their privacy policies.

1.1.7     Third party websites

The website contains links to other websites. We are not responsible for the privacy policies or practices of third party websites.

1.1.8     International data transfers

Information that we collect may be stored and processed in and transferred between any of the countries in which we operate to enable us to use the information in accordance with this privacy policy.

Information which you provide may be transferred to countries, including the United States, which do not have data protection laws equivalent to those in force in the European Economic Area.

In addition, personal information that you submit for publication on the website will be published on the internet and may be available, via the internet, around the world.  We cannot prevent the use or misuse of such information by others.

You expressly agree to such transfers of personal information.

1.1.9     Security of your personal information

We will take reasonable technical and organisational precautions to prevent the loss, misuse or alteration of your personal information.

We will store all the personal information you provide on our secure (password and firewall protected) servers. All electronic transactions you make to or receive from us will be encrypted using SSL technology.

Of course, data transmission over the internet is inherently insecure, and we cannot guarantee the security of data sent over the internet.

You are responsible for keeping your password and user details confidential. We will not ask you for your password (except when you log in to the website).

1.1.10     Updating information

You can update the information we hold on you when logged into the website.

1.1.11     Sale of the business

In the event that the business is sold or integrated into another business, your details may be disclosed to our advisors, and to any potential purchaser's advisors, and following completion of a sale would transfer to the new owners of the business

1.1.12     Policy amendments

We may update this privacy policy from time-to-time by posting a new version on our website.  You should check this page occasionally to ensure you are happy with any changes.

We may also notify you of changes to our privacy policy by email.