Privacy policy

Equinet (Equinet Media Ltd) is a HubSpot Platinum Partner and content marketing agency working with contract manufacturing companies. We deliver inbound strategies, inbound implementation and content creation for clients. And we build intelligent websites that drive engagement and qualified leads.

Here we outline our approach to collecting and processing personal data and how we keep it safe, including the following areas:

1. What this Privacy Policy covers
2. The HubSpot marketing platform
3. Information we collect
4. How we use the Information, we collect
5. Navigational Information
6. How to opt-out or unsubscribe
7. The legal bases for processing your data
8. Your right to your personal information
   
   

Equinet is committed to protecting your privacy following our obligations under data protection legislation. From the 25th of May 2018, the primary data protection law will be the General Data Protection Regulation, replacing the Data Protection Act 1998.

This Privacy Policy explains, in this context, what Information Equinet collects about you and how it will be used. We aim to be transparent with you when we collect your data and use it only in ways you reasonably expect.

The Policy applies to this website (https://www.equinetmedia.com) and overarches our data collection, processing and usage practices, achieved chiefly via marketing automation software. Using our website, you consent to the data practices described in this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree with these, you should not use the Equinet website.

We may make changes to this Privacy Policy from time to time, particularly where changes in legislation warrant this. To that end, we encourage you to review this Privacy Policy periodically. If we make any significant changes to how we collect and process your personal information, we will make this clear via our website or by contacting you directly.

This Policy recognises the new rights of individuals under GDPR and describes your choices regarding the use, access and correction of your personal information. We have a written policy outlining how Equinet will respond to data subject requests, a copy available on request.

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about data protection, please contact us at info@equinetmedia.com If you are not satisfied with the response you receive from us for any reason, then you may wish to contact the Information Commissioner's Office via https://ico.org.uk/.

Equinet is a HubSpot Platinum partner and uses the HubSpot platform to underpin inbound marketing and sales activity for ourselves and our Customers. HubSpot’s marketing automation platform allows us to build and manage our web pages effectively as an inbound marketing hub where visitors can learn more about our company, download content, and provide their contact information and other demographic Information, as and where appropriate. This information, which is stored and managed on the HubSpot service providers' servers (learn more about HubSpot data protection and security here), is then used by Equinet so that the visitors can be contacted about their interest in our services and can interact with us as they choose.

HubSpot provides its platform through a subscription service to its customers for marketing and lead generation; we use the subscription service ourselves for Equinet, and, in turn, it is used for building websites for our Customers’ own marketing and lead generation. Information that we collect and manage using the HubSpot subscription service for our own marketing belongs to us {i.e. Equinet is the Data Controller) and is used, disclosed and protected according to this Privacy Policy.

We use the HubSpot platform to build marketing webpages for our inbound marketing Customers that people can visit to learn more about their business. Any information collected and managed within our Customer HubSpot portals belongs to them (they are Data Controllers) and is used, disclosed and protected by them according to their privacy policies. Equinet acts as a Data Processor for our customers, processing their data by our contracts and agreements with them; we are prohibited from using that Information except as necessary to provide the inbound marketing service we have been contractually engaged for. We have no direct relationship with individuals who provide Personal Information to our Customers.

Equinet acknowledges that you have the right to access your Personal Information. Our Customers control and are responsible for correcting, deleting or updating information they have collected from you using the HubSpot platform. If you are a customer of one of our Customers and would no longer like to be contacted by them, please contact that Customer directly; if requested to remove data ourselves [as Data Processors for our Customers], we will respond within a reasonable timeframe. We may also work with our customers to help them provide notice to their visitors about their data collection, processing and usage.

You can explore the Equinet website without providing personal Information about yourself. When you visit the website to download our content or subscribe to our blog, we request that you provide Personal Information about yourself, and we collect Navigational Information.

This refers to any information you voluntarily submit to us that identifies you personally, including contact information, such as your name, e-mail address, company name, address, phone number, and other information about yourself or your business. Personal Information can also include Information about any transactions you enter on our website and Information about you that is available on the Internet, such as from Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google, or publicly available Information we acquire from service providers.

This refers to Information about your computer and your visits to this website, such as your IP address, geographical location, browser type, referral source, length of visit and pages viewed. Please see the "Navigation Information" section below.

Our website is not aimed at addressing anyone under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from children under 13. If you are a parent or guardian and you are aware that your Child has provided us with Personal Information, please contact us. If we become aware that we have collected Personal Information from a child under the age of 13 without verification of parental consent, we take steps to remove that Information from our servers.

We use the information we collect only in compliance with this Privacy Policy.

We will never sell your Personal Information to any third party.

In addition to the uses identified elsewhere in this Privacy Policy, we may use your Personal Information to (a) improve your browsing experience by personalising our website and to improve your experience or engagement with our content; (b) send information to you that we think may be of interest to you by post, email, or other means; (c) send you marketing communications, which might include content offers, surveys or training/event details, relating to our business which we think may be of interest to you.

We use Navigational Information to operate and improve our website and your experience of it. We may also use Navigational Information alone or in combination with Personal Information to provide you with personalised Information about Equinet.

We post customer testimonials and comments on our website, which may contain Personal Information. We obtain each customer's consent before posting the customer's name and testimonial.

We use marketing platforms and partner services that are scrupulous about the safety of the data we store with them, using a variety of security technologies and procedures to help protect your Personal Information from unauthorised access, use or disclosure. They secure the Personal Information you provide on computer servers in a controlled, secure environment, protected from unauthorised access, use or disclosure. You can contact us at info@equinetmedia.com to understand more about the security provisions of the platforms we use.

Our website includes Social Media features, such as the Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn “sharing” or “follow” buttons. Users are advised before using such social sharing buttons that they do so at their own discretion and note that the social media platform may track and save your request to share a web page respectively through your social media platform account. To this end, such features may collect your IP address, which page you are visiting on our sites, and may set a cookie to enable the feature to function properly. This Privacy Policy does not apply to these features. Instead, they will be covered by the company's policies.

Our website provides links to other websites via links in blog posts or webpage copy. We do not control and are not responsible for the content or practices of these other websites. Our provision of such links does not constitute our endorsement of these other websites, their content, their owners, or their practices. This Privacy Policy does not apply to these other websites, which are subject to policies they may have.

We retain the Personal Information you provide us as long as we consider it potentially useful in contacting you about our services or as needed to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes and enforce our agreements, and then securely delete the Information. If you provide Information to our Customers as part of their marketing activity, our Customers - as Data Controllers - are responsible for the retention of the personal information they collect from you. We will delete this Information from our systems at an earlier date if you so request, as described in "Opting Out and Unsubscribing" below.

Where we work with Customers outside of the European Economic Area, we may transfer and access Personal Information from around the world, including the United States. This Privacy Policy - cognisant of GDPR - shall apply even if we transfer Personal Information to other countries.

We reserve the right to use or disclose your Personal Information if required by law or if we reasonably believe that use or disclosure is necessary to protect our rights, protect your safety or the safety of others, investigate fraud, or comply with a law, court order, or legal process.

Equinet uses cookies or similar technologies to analyse trends, administer the website, track users’ movements around the website, and gather demographic Information about our visitor base.

We use "cookies" to help you personalise and enhance your online experience. A cookie is a text file placed on your hard disk by a Web server. Cookies are not used to run programs or deliver viruses to your computer. Cookies are uniquely assigned to you and can only be read by a Web server in the domain that issued the cookie to you. One of the primary purposes of cookies is to provide a convenience feature to save you time. The purpose of a cookie is to tell the Web server that you have returned to a specific page. For example, if you personalise pages on our Website, for instance, completing a form, a cookie helps us to recall your specific information on subsequent visits. When you return to the same Website, the information you previously provided can be retrieved, so you can easily use the customised features.

You have the ability to accept or decline cookies. Most Web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. If you choose to decline cookies, you may not be able to fully experience the interactive features of the web pages you visit. We use the HubSpot platform to keep track of the pages you visit to determine what portion of our site is the most popular or most used by you. This data can be used to deliver customised content and promotions within the Equinet website, for instance, to visitors whose behaviour indicates that they are interested in a particular subject area.

In addition, when you’re accessing our website, your device may provide information about the device you’re using, including the type of device or what operating system you’re using. Your device manufacturer or operating system provider will be able to provide you with more details about the Information your device makes available to us.

Equinet may gather Information about your computer hardware and software that is automatically collected by the HubSpot marketing platform and other website analysis software, such as Hotjar. This information can include your IP address, browser type, domain names, internet service provider (ISP), the files viewed on our site (e.g., HTML pages, graphics, etc.), access times and referring website addresses. This information is used by Equinet to maintain and improve the quality of our website user experience and for general statistics regarding the use of our website.

We sometimes use Google Analytics to help us understand how visitors are using and engaging with our website. This again allows us to make improvements to our web services and your online experience. The Google Analytics tracking tool uses several cookies to collect information and report website usage statistics without personally identifying individual visitors to Google or Equinet.

The information generated by the cookie about your use of our website will be transmitted and stored by Google on servers in the United States. For more information about Google’s Privacy Policy in regards to Google Analytics, please see www.google.com/analytics/learn/privacy.html

You always have a choice as to whether and how you want to receive communications about our content and services. As inbound marketers, your permission is central to how we engage with you; for example, you will need to specifically opt-in to receive blog notifications from us.

If you want to change your contact preferences or opt-out of communications, you can do this at any time by clicking the “update my preferences” or “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of any email from us.

If you choose not to be contacted by us, we will never send you marketing communications, but we may keep your details on a ‘suppression list’ to ensure you aren’t contacted.

You may also let us know via our general email info@equinetmedia.com or at our address: Equinet Media Ltd, 1 Goldington Road, Bedford MK40 3JY

You can unsubscribe from our Customer’s marketing communications exactly as ours by clicking on the "unsubscribe" link at the bottom of their emails or amending your contact preferences (again via the appropriate link in the email footer).

Given that the majority of our engagement with our website visitors, subscribers and leads adheres to a permission-based, inbound philosophy, we will often rely on “consent” when using personal data that reach us via our site. An example of this would be when you actively subscribe to receive our blog updates or newsletters or when you submit your data to download an eBook from us. In line with GDPR, we recognise that this consent needs to be freely given and unambiguous, so we will use language on those forms that is clear and easy to understand.

We will sometimes collect and process your personal information using the “legitimate interest” legal processing basis. For instance, this might relate to an occasion where we offer you more personalised content on our website based on navigational Information we’ve collected about your previous interaction with the site. Alternatively, if you've downloaded one of our eBooks or guides, we may occasionally send you further blog or content offers that we believe you may find interesting or helpful. We hope that your interest in this type of tailored content would be a reasonable expectation on our behalf (in keeping with legitimate interest guidance), and remember, you can choose to opt out of these types of emails at any time (as described in section 6 above). We believe this would be a reasonable expectation - given the detailed Information above - and would enhance your experience of our website. We may also rely on legitimate interest on those occasions where we conduct outreach marketing activities.

Sometimes, we will need to process your data as it is part of a contract which you have entered into. For instance, if you have booked a place at an event we are hosting, or perhaps you have asked us to send you a proposal for how we might work together, then we will need to contact you to enable us to provide the relevant services under the agreement with you.

Under the General Data Protection Regulation, you have the right to request a copy of the personal Information we hold about you - your "right to access". You also have the right to request that we erase any personal information we hold where we have no compelling reason to continue processing this data.

If you wish to request this information or exercise your "right to erasure", please contact info@equinetmedia.com or call 01234 262262. Once we have received and verified your information request, we will respond or action your request within one month. A detailed policy document describing this process is available on request.