Under competition law aspects, where certain requirements are fulfilled email advertising targeted at existing customers may be admissible even without the customers’ consent. Under data privacy aspects, this has been decided differently up to now.

The recent application recommendation of the federal data protection authorities has eliminated this conflict. Pursuant to this recommendation, personalized email addresses of existing customers may be saved with the customers’ data and used for advertising purposes where such addresses have been obtained within the scope of the conclusion of a contract and the advertising refers to the same goods or services.