Home Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, transfer, and store any personal information that we collect from you or that you provide to us through www.channelcomms.today (the “Website”) or when contacting us in relation to our services.

It is important that you read this privacy notice together with any other privacy notice or fair processing notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal data about you so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your data. This privacy notice supplements the other notices and is not intended to override them.

The Website is not intended for children and we do not knowingly collect data relating to children.

The Website is operated by Essential Communications Limited (Essential), which is the data controller and responsible for the website.

Data Controller Details

Essential Communications Limited trade as:

Essential
The Barn
Lane End
Penwood Road
Newbury
Berkshire
RG20 0LR

t. +44 (0) 1635 522851
e. hello@theessential.agency
w. www.theessential.agency

We are committed to protecting your privacy

This Policy indicates the type of processes that may result in data being collected about you. Your use of this website gives us the right to collect that information.

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

IP address lookup

Our company uses third parties to provide information about visitors to our websites. When you visit our websites we will record your IP address. This address will be matched against public and proprietary IP address databases to provide us with information about your visit. This information may identify the organisation to whom the IP address is registered but not individuals. In some limited cases i.e. single person companies, it may be possible to identify personal data from publicly available ICANN data.

Website cookies and link tracking

Cookies allow us to provide important site functionality so you don’t have to re-enter lots of information. They also allow us to remember what links and pages have been clicked or viewed during a session. If you have provided us with personal data, completing a contact form for example, we may associate this personal data with other information. This will allow us to identify and record what is most relevant to you.

By using your browser controls, you are always in control of the cookies we store and access on your computer. More information on how to control cookies and limit personal data processing can be found at www.youronlinechoices.com/uk/five-top-tips.

Types of communications

By submitting your email address you are consenting to receive the particular piece of information you requested, as well as allowing us to send you appropriate and useful communications. This includes, but is not limited to; invitations to our industry leading events and webinars, our latest content (whitepapers, guides, reports, infographics, videos and case studies) and promotional offers. 

At any time, you can update your preferences by clicking the link in any emails you receive from us. The link will always be in the footer of the email. You can also stop receiving emails from us using that same link. If you don’t have an email from us to hand and want to update your preferences, contact us at hello@theessential.agency and we will send you an email for you to change your preferences as you wish.

Information Collected

We may collect any or all of the information that you give us depending on the type of transaction you enter into, including your name, address, telephone number and email address, together with data about your use of the website. Other information that may be needed from time to time to process a request may also be collected as indicated on the website.

Information Use

We use the information collected primarily to process the task for which you visited the website. Data collected in the UK is held in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation. All reasonable precautions are taken to prevent unauthorised access to this information. This safeguard may require you to provide additional forms of identity should you wish to obtain information about your account details.

We have set out below, in a table format, a description of all the ways we plan to use your personal data, and which of the legal bases we rely on to do so. We have also identified what our legitimate interests are where appropriate and how long we will retain the personal data.

Purpose or activityLawful basis for processingData Retention period
To response to an expression of interest in our servicesNecessary for our legitimate interests (to respond to potential sales enquiries).12 months from date of original enquiry
The provision of our servicesPerformance of a contract or use of this website.24 months from the termination of the contract
To use data analytics to improve our website, products/services, marketing, customer relationships and experiencesNecessary for our legitimate interests (to define types of customers for our products and services, to keep our website updated and relevant, to develop our business and to inform our marketing strategy)24 months from termination of the contract governing the relationship.
To make suggestions and recommendations to you about goods or services that may be of interest to youNecessary for our legitimate interests (to develop our products/services and grow our business)12 months from date of original enquiry

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.

Cookies

Your Internet browser has the in-built facility for storing small files – “Cookies” – that hold information which allows a website to recognise you as a user. Our website takes advantage of this facility to enhance your experience. We use a number of these cookies for analytical purposes, and these are described in detail below. By using the Essential website, you consent to the use of cookies for these purposes.

We use a combination of both session and persistent cookies. Session cookies keep track of your current visit and how you navigate the site, persistent cookies enable our website to recognise you as a repeat visitor when you return. The session cookies will be deleted from your computer when you close your browser. Persistent cookies will be removed on a pre-determined expiry date, or when deleted by you.

Most web browsers allow user privacy settings to block either all cookies, or third party cookies. Blocking cookies will, however, have a negative impact upon the usability of many websites, including this one. Please visit www.aboutcookies.org for comprehensive information on how to change your cookie settings in a wide variety of different web browsers.

Google Analytics Cookies

Google Analytics is a website monitoring tool that allows users to see volumes of website visitors, their source, and to analyse how the content of their website is viewed and navigated. This in turn allows optimisation of the content and pages on www.theessential.agency and the marketing programs that drive traffic to the website. Google Analytics does not store any personal information about website visitors, but does use persistent cookies to identify repeat visitors. You may universally opt-out of all Google Analytics tracking used by all websites by visiting the following url – https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout

HubSpot Cookies

Our website is built and hosted in HubSpot.  HubSpot’s tracking code sets a number of tracking cookies when a visitor lands on our website. These cookies fall into two general categories: 

  • Essential/necessary cookies: essential cookies which do not require consent. 
  • Consent banner cookies: cookies included in the consent banner under GDPR.

Essential/necessary cookies

__hs_opt_out
This cookie is used by the opt-in privacy policy to remember not to ask the visitor to accept cookies again. This cookie is set when you give visitors the choice to opt out of cookies.
(Expires: 13 months)

__hs_do_not_track
This cookie can be set to prevent the tracking code from sending any information to our HubSpot instance. Setting this cookie is different from opting out of cookies, as it still allows anonymised information to be sent to HubSpot.
(Expires: 13 months)

hs_ab_test
This cookie is used to consistently serve visitors the same version of an A/B test page they’ve seen before.
(Expires: end of session)

<id>_key
When visiting a password-protected page, this cookie is set so future visits to the page from the same browser do not require login again. The cookie name is unique for each password-protected page.   

hs-messages-is-open
This cookie is used to determine and save whether the chat widget is open for future visits. It resets to re-close the widget after 30 minutes of inactivity.
(Expires: 30 minutes

hs-messages-hide-welcome-message
This cookie is used to prevent the welcome message from appearing again for one day after it is dismissed.
(Expires: 1 day

__hsmem
This cookie is set when visitors log in to our HubSpot-hosted site.
(Expires: 1 year

__hstc
The main cookie for tracking visitors. It contains the domain, utk, initial timestamp (first visit), last timestamp (last visit), current timestamp (this visit), and session number (increments for each subsequent session).
(Expires: 13 months) 

hubspotutk
This cookie is used to keep track of a visitor’s identity. This cookie is passed to our HubSpot instance on form submission and used when deduplicating contacts.
(Expires: 13 months) 

__hssc
This cookie keeps track of sessions. This is used to determine if HubSpot should increment the session number and timestamps in the __hstc cookie. It contains the domain, viewCount (increments each pageView in a session), and session start timestamp. 
(Expires: 30 min) 

__hssrc
Whenever HubSpot changes the session cookie, this cookie is also set to determine if the visitor has restarted their browser. If this cookie does not exist when HubSpot manages cookies, it is considered a new session.
(Expires: end of session) 

messagesUtk
This cookie is used to recognise visitors who chat with us via the messages tool. If the visitor leaves our site before they’re added as a contact, they will have this cookie associated with their browser. If we chat with a visitor who later returns to our site in the same cookied browser, the messages tool will load their conversation history.
(Expires: 13 months)

Disclosing Information

We do not disclose any personal information obtained about you from this website to third parties except when we need to do so in order to complete the transaction – e.g. when arranging for a courier company to deliver goods that you have ordered. We may also use the information to keep in contact with you and inform you of developments associated with our business. You will be given the opportunity to remove yourself from any mailing list or similar device. If at any time in the future we should wish to disclose information collected on this website to any third party, it would only be with your knowledge and consent.

We may from time to time provide information of a general nature to third parties – for example, the number of individuals visiting our website or completing a registration form, but we will not use any information that could identify those individuals.

Changes to this Policy

Any changes to our Privacy Policy will be placed here and will supersede this version of our Policy. We will take reasonable steps to draw your attention to any changes in our Policy. However, to be on the safe side, we suggest that you read this document each time you use the website to ensure that it still meets with your approval.

Contacting Us

If you have any questions about our Privacy Policy, or if you want to know what information we have collected about you, please email us at hello@theessential.agency You can also correct any factual errors in that information or require us to remove your details from any list under our control.