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Who we are

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Information we collect about you

These are the categories of data we may process:

• Contact DetailsReal name, email address, address, telephone number, social media username, title, physical address.
• Financial DataCredit card number, CCV, credit card expiry date, bank account number, billing address, transaction code (TAN), income information, VAT number, credit score.
• Identifiers and Legal DocumentsPublic health number, passport, proof of residence, right to work status, visa status, social security / national insurance number, driver's licence data, national identification document, signature.
• Personal CharacteristicsSex, nationality, date of birth, gender, academic qualifications, height, age.
• Location DataTracking data, approximate location.
• Communications DataEmails and replies, instant messaging data, social media posts, postal content.
• Images and RecordingsCCTV footage, photos, videos, voice recordings, profile picture.
• Views and OpinionsSurvey responses, testimonials/references, opinions (non-political/religious/philosophical).
• Work-related DataName of employer, job title, occupation, publication or outlet, completed tasks, time and activity records, details of grievance, disciplinary proceedings, curriculum vitae / resume.
• Technical IdentifiersIP address, MAC address, usernames, passwords, browser data, other device identifiers, unique identifier.
• Activity and BehaviouralStatistical or demographic data for any purpose, including pages visited on our website.

Aggregated Data could be derived from your personal data but is not considered personal data in law as this data will not directly or indirectly reveal your identity. However, if we combine or connect Aggregated Data with your personal data so that it can directly or indirectly identify you, we treat the combined data as personal data which will be used in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

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Legal justifications we rely on to process personal data

We process personal data for the purposes described in this policy, based on the following legal bases:

• Consent

  The individual has given clear consent for us to process their personal data for a specific purpose. We use consent for non-essential cookies and similar technologies, including analytics, advertising and visitor identification tools.

• Legitimate Interests

  We have a business or commercial reason to process your personal data, so long as this is not overridden by the individuals' own rights and interests. You can object to processing based on legitimate interests at any time.

• Contractual Obligations

  The processing is necessary for a contract we have with the individual, or because they have asked us to take specific steps before entering into a contract.

• Legal Obligations

  The processing is necessary for us to comply with the law.

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How we process personal data of our Customers

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How we process personal data of our Leads

We contact people at businesses we believe could benefit from our services, using their business contact details. We rely on our legitimate interests to do this. Every marketing email includes a simple way to opt out, and if you opt out or object we add your details to a suppression list so we do not contact you again. We obtain business contact details from B2B data providers (such as Apollo.io) and from public sources such as company websites and professional networks.

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How we process personal data of Journalists, Publishers & Creators

To run digital PR, link building and creator campaigns for our clients, we contact journalists, editors, website owners and content creators using their professional contact details. We rely on our legitimate interests to do this and only contact people about content relevant to what they cover or publish. We obtain these details from media and PR databases (such as Journofinder, Press Ranger, Qwoted and HARO), link building marketplaces (such as FatGrid, Collaborator.pro and Backlinker.ai) and public sources such as publication websites and social media profiles. You can ask us to stop contacting you at any time.

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How we process personal data of our Website Visitors

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How we process personal data of our Contractors

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How we process personal data of our Staff

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How we process personal data of our Job Applicants

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How your personal data is collected

We use different methods to collect personal data from and about you including through:

• Direct interactions

  You may give us information on your Contact Details, Identifiers, Financial Data and other categories by filling in forms or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email, via our website or otherwise. This includes personal data you provide when you: apply for our products or services; create an account with us; subscribe to publications; request marketing to be sent to you; or give us feedback or contact us.

• Automated technologies or interactions

  As you interact with our website and services, we will automatically collect Technical, Profile and Usage Data about your equipment, browsing actions, and patterns. Where you consent to non-essential cookies, this includes visitor identification tools (RB2B and Albacross) that may match your visit to your company or to your business profile.

• Third parties or publicly available sources

  We might receive personal data about you from various third parties or publicly available sources, including: business contact and company data from B2B data providers such as Apollo.io; journalist and publisher contact details from media databases and link building marketplaces; work-related data from online recruitment platforms, freelance marketplaces or professional networks; and identity and contact data from publicly available sources.

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Third Parties & Sub-Processors

We might store or send personal data about you to various third parties set out below.

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International Transfers

Some of our external third parties are based outside the UK and EEA so their processing of your personal data will involve a transfer of data outside the UK or EEA.

Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the UK or EEA, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:

• The country to which personal data is being transferred has been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data; or

• We use appropriate transfer mechanisms such as Standard Contractual Clauses or the UK International Data Transfer Agreement.

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Data Security

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used, or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered, or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors, and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

Where you have chosen a password that enables you to access certain parts of our applications, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share the password with anyone.

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Data Retention

We will only retain your personal data for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting, or reporting requirements. We may retain your personal data for a longer period in the event of a complaint or if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of litigation with respect to our relationship with you.

If you ask us not to contact you again, we keep a minimal record of your email address on a suppression list so that we can respect that request.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal, regulatory, tax, accounting, or other requirements.

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Use of AI tools

We use AI assistants and automations, including Anthropic's Claude, to help run our business. These tools can read and act on information held in our email (Gmail), CRM (Close), messaging (Slack) and other business systems. This means they may process most of the categories of personal data described in this policy, including contact details, communications, and information about customers, leads, journalists, publishers and contractors.

We use AI tools to help draft and summarise emails, prioritise and organise our inbox, update CRM records, research companies and publications, and prepare reports. We rely on our legitimate interests in running our business efficiently for this processing.

A person at Searchant reviews AI-drafted messages before they are sent, and AI tools do not make decisions about you that have legal or similarly significant effects. Where the provider offers the option, we use settings that stop your data being used to train their AI models.

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Automated decision-making and profiling

Your personal data is not used in any automated decision making (a decision made solely by automated means without any human involvement) that produces legal or similarly significant effects on you. Where you consent to visitor identification and advertising cookies, we and our partners may use your browsing activity to understand which businesses are interested in our services and to show more relevant advertising.

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Your Legal Rights

You have the right to:

• Request access to your personal data

  Commonly known as a "data subject access request". This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.

• Request correction of your personal data

  This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.

• Request erasure of your personal data

  This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us to continue to process it. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.

• Object to processing of your personal data

  Where we are relying on a legitimate interest and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You have an absolute right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes, including B2B outreach. Just reply to any of our emails or contact gdpr@searchant.co.

• Request restriction of processing

  This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in certain scenarios, for example if you want us to establish the data's accuracy or where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it.

• Request the transfer of your personal data

  We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.

• Withdraw consent at any time

  Where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. You can change your cookie choices at any time using the button in the Cookie Policy below.

• Make a complaint

  You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK regulator for data protection, at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113. We would appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns first, so please contact us at gdpr@searchant.co.

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive, or excessive.

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it could take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made several requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

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Third-Party Links

This website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the Privacy Policy of every website you visit.