Privacy Notice

This privacy notice tells you how Connected Vet will collect and process your personal data if you purchase our services and products, sign up to our webinars and use our Academy website.

About Us

Connected Vet is a digital marketing services company and our Academy, this online training website, is designed to support independent veterinary practices and their teams to improve their digital marketing skills. We are a trusted voice when it comes to digital marketing for Vets and want to help practices improve their results, whether that’s increased sales, enhanced client experience or data protection compliance.

Who to contact regarding your personal data

We take your privacy seriously. Our Data Protection Manager looks after data protection and would be happy to answer any of your questions about this privacy notice and how Connected Vet uses your data. They can be contacted directly via our Contact Us page or on 07540 364483.

How we collect and process your personal data

We will only use your personal data where there is a clear legal basis to do so. There are four main ways we process the personal data you provide. We endeavour to keep this information accurate and up to date, and not keep it longer than is necessary.

1. To administer your account as an Academy client

In order to perform a contract between us to provide our service effectively and ensure the best possible experience, we need to collect and process the following personal data when you purchase a course or product – first name, last name, address, phone number, email address and company name.

This personal data will be used for the following services and purposes:

To administer your account and provide the products and services you have purchased from us. For example, invoicing, emailing instructions for changing a password, contacting you to change an appointment and to keep a record for legal and accounting purposes.
To inform you of product and course updates. For example, notification of new documents being added to the document pack you have purchased.
To support you in making progress through a course, providing reminders and tips that aid your learning experience.
To ask you for feedback on your experience with Connected Vet Academy.

2. To send you marketing communications as an Academy client or webinar registrant

We send all our clients and webinar registrants marketing communications, which is necessary for our legitimate interests to develop and build our online training business. These communications include:

Information on our latest products, services and webinars.
News information on related themes like digital marketing, client experience, data protection and independent veterinary practice performance.
Promotions and the latest related course and product offers.
Promoting products and courses through Facebooking advertising.

Clients and webinar registrants find these communications useful in keeping up to date with what is going on at our Academy and finding out more about the latest trends and developments in digital marketing and client experience. They are only sent to existing clients and webinar registrants who can opt-out at any time.

The personal data that we process for these communications is first name, last name, email address, address, company, position and mobile phone number.

We would like our clients and webinar registrants to enjoy these communications, so it is important to note that you can opt-out at any time by:

Clicking the ‘Unsubscribe’ link in any marketing communications email or by replying to that email if there is no unsubscribe link provided.
Contacting our team via our Contact Us page.
Calling our Data Protection Manager on 07540 364483.

3. When you use our Academy website

This is necessary for our legitimate interests to provide a great website experience and respond to enquiries.

When someone visits https://www.connectedvetacademy.co.uk we use a third party service, Google Analytics, to collect standard internet log information and details of visitor behaviour patterns. We do this to find out things like the number of visitors to the various parts of the website. This information is processed in a way which does not identify anyone.

We use cookies, which are small text files that are placed on your computer when you visit. We do this to make our website work more efficiently and to promote our news, products and services on social media. Visit our Cookie Notice to manage your cookie settings and view more information on how we use them and why.

We also use a third party service to help maintain the security and performance of our website. To deliver this service it processes the IP addresses (a number assigned to each of your devices connected to the internet by your broadband provider) of visitors to the Connected Vet Academy website.

We provide a contact form on our website and collect users’ personal information to help them complete certain tasks. The form details the information required and an explanation of what the form is for. For general enquiries, once an enquiry has been dealt with, the data is deleted in line with Connected Vet’s procedures.

4. When you interact with our Messenger Bot

We provide clients, webinar registrants and non-clients access to free content and certain services in our Facebook Messenger Bot.

The personal data that Facebook provides for us to process these communications is first name, last name, gender, nationality, profile image and Facebook ID. We may also process email address and mobile phone number if provided by the user.

If you are an existing client, we process your personal data under contract and our legitimate interests, which includes marketing as detailed in point 2 above.

If you are a webinar registrant, we process your personal data under our legitimate interests, which includes marketing as detailed in point 2 above.

If you are not a client, we process your data initially under our legitimate interests to provide the content or service through the Bot that you have requested. We never send marketing messages to non-clients without first asking permission. This permission is consent, which you can withdraw at any time by simply typing “stop” or by using the ‘Unsubscribe’ buttons where they appear.

Note: To use our Bot, a Facebook user must subscribe to the Bot service. Its the way Facebook works and its easy to unsubscribe at anytime by simply typing “stop”. It is not the same as agreeing to marketing, which we do separately if you are not a client.

Sensitive Data

We do not collect sensitive or special category data.

Disclosure of personal data to our service providers

We may pass on your personal data to service providers contracted to Connected Vet in the course of dealing with you. They act as a data processor on our behalf and are obliged under contract to keep your details secure, and only use them to fulfil the services they provide on our behalf. When they no longer need your data to fulfil this service, they dispose of it in line with our procedures.

If we sell any business assets in which case we may disclose your information to the buyer of such business or assets.

Connected Vet will not pass on your personal data to any other third parties without your consent unless the law requires us to do so.

International Transfer

We do use data processors that provide our email marketing system and webinar recording system that reside outside the European Economic Area (EEA). This means that the processing of your personal data will involve a transfer of data outside of the EEA.

Our data processors are based in the United States and are both EU-US Privacy Shield certified, which requires them to provide similar protection to personal data as it has in Europe under GDPR.

How long do we process your data for?

Connected Vet is required to retain information in accordance with the law, such as information needed for income tax and audit purposes.

In order to comply with our professional liability insurance, we keep and securely store past clients records for seven years. This includes full name, address, email address, company name and telephone number.

We will only actively process your personal data whilst you are a client. After two years of inactivity we will email or call clients to prompt them to see if they wish to remain as a client. If there is no response to our enquiries we will close the client’s account and archive the data for a further five years, after which time it will be deleted.

If you are a webinar registrant and there is no meaningful engagement after 12 months we will delete your personal data.

Data Security

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed.

There are also procedures in place to deal with any suspected personal data breach and we will notify you and the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

Third-party Links

Our websites may include links to third-party websites. Clicking on those links may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements.

Your rights as a data subject

At any point while we are in possession of or processing your personal data, you the data subject, have the following rights:

Right of access – you have the right to request a copy of the information that we hold about you. You can do that by contacting our Data Protection Manager via our Contact Us page or by calling 07540 364483. If we do hold information about you we will give you a description of it, tell you why we are holding it, tell you who it could be disclosed to, and let you have a copy of the information in an intelligible form.

Please note that you will need to provide proof of identity – a current passport or driving licence.

Right of rectification – you have a right to correct data that we hold about you that is inaccurate or incomplete.
Right to be forgotten – in certain circumstances you can ask for the data we hold about you to be erased from our records.
Right to restriction of processing – where certain conditions apply to have a right to restrict the processing.
Right of portability – you have the right to have the data we hold about you transferred to another organisation.
Right to object – you have the right to object to certain types of processing such as direct marketing.
Right to object to automated processing, including profiling – you also have the right to be subject to the legal effects of automated processing or profiling.
Right to judicial review: in the event that Connected Vet refuses your request under rights of access, we will provide you with a reason as to why. You have the right to complain as outlined below.

Complaints

We take the processing of your personal data very seriously and are here to help with any concerns you may have. Please do contact our Data Protection Manager via our Contact Us page or by calling 07540 364483.

If you are still not happy with how your personal data is being processed by Connected Vet or how your complaint has been handled, you also have the right to lodge a complaint directly with the Information Commissioners Office at https://ico.org.uk/concerns/ or by calling 0303 123 1113.