Solarplaza Privacy Policy

About this Privacy Policy

We know how important it is for you to understand how we use your data. This Privacy Policy sets out how and why we collect, store, process and share your personal data. We will always be transparent with you about what we do with your personal data.

This Policy also tells you what your rights are in relation to the personal data you give to us. If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or your rights under it please contact:

Address: 

Solarplaza International B.V. 
Postal address:
P.O. Box 2299
3000 CG Rotterdam

Visitor address:

Conradstraat 18 E2.166
3013AP Rotterdam

Telephone: +31 10 280 9198
E-mail: [email protected]

We are Solarplaza International B.V. (company number - Chamber of Commerce Rotterdam: 52919129) (“Solarplaza”) and our registered address is P.O. Box 2299, 3000 CG Rotterdam. Solarplaza is the “data controller” of any personal data it may collect, process and hold about you, unless we inform you otherwise.

This privacy policy is structured in the following order:

What?
Why?
When & How? 
Where & Who?
Your rights
Changing your preferences
Security and retention
Changes to this Policy

The personal data we collect from you directly can include:

The personal data we collect from you indirectly can include:

• Attendance of our physical events & related purchasing history
• Attendance of our free online webinars
• Email opening & clicking behaviour
• Interaction with our websites (page views)
• Completion of forms related to mailing subscriptions and accessing of content

We collect and keep your personal data in order to inform you on services, information and content that are considered relevant to you. We aim to collect the right kind of data - especially on preferences - in order to make our communication to you as relevant as possible. 

We will only use your Personal Information in the following ways (depending on the types of information): (i) so that we can perform a contract with you; (ii) for the purposes of legal compliance; and (iii) for the purposes of our legitimate business interests (namely to carry out and improve our business, analyse the use of our Websites and services and support our customers and Website users).

We collect personal data directly:

• When you perform a purchase ticket for our event, we collect (only the necessary) personal data through a ticketing module. We do not keep financial & payment data (eg. credit card information, bank accounts) on file. 
• When you sign a sponsorship or partnership agreement with us, related to an event or package of events, we directly collect personal data over email and/or phone, limited to the necessary information to set up a contract and perform financial administration.
• When you complete a form - on one of our websites - related to an event mailing list, newsletter, or the accessing/downloading of a complimentary content piece (including reports, data overviews, brochures, webinar (recordings)), we collect basic personal data for contact and emailing purposes. 

We collect personal data indirectly:

• When you visit our websites we collect - through cookies - analytical data on the pages you visit (and duration of those visits) and the links you click, as well as the geographical location of your access point. We do not collect advanced demographical data. 
• When you are signed up to receive our emails, we keep track of the emails that have been sent to you and your basic behaviour with regards to them, in terms of email opens and the clicking of links inside these emails.

In addition, and in common with many other websites and online services, we may use "cookies" to store and sometimes track information about you, such as your Internet Protocol (IP) address. A cookie is a small amount of data sent from the server which is stored on your PC's hard drive. You will see a message on our websites before we store a cookie on your computer which describes the types of cookies we use and what information they might collect. Through these banners or pop-ups from we provide you with options around cookies use. You can also set your browser to refuse cookies or ask your browser to show you where cookies have been set up. Please note however that certain services are only activated by the presence of a cookie and, if you choose to reject the cookie, a particular online feature may not be available to you. You can learn more about cookies here.

A cookie in no way gives us access to your computer or any information about you, other than information about how you use the Websites and the data you choose to share with us (including data you automatically share with us by way of your browser settings). We use the following cookies:

• Strictly necessary/functional cookies - refered to as "Functional cookies". These are cookies that are required for the operation of our Websites and ensure the most optimal website experience for both first-time and returning visitors. 
• Analytical/performance/targeting cookies - refered to as "Analytical cookies". They allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around the Websites when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way the websites work, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily. Targeting cookies record your visit to the websites, the pages you have visited and the links you have followed. 
• Marketing and remarketing cookies - refered to as "Marketing cookies". Marketing cookies are specifically tied to the Xing registration module that we use in our event websites. Remarketing cookies gather information for remarketing, re-engagement, or similar audiences on our website related to third-party advertising services. Third-party vendors, including Google, show our ads on sites across the Internet and use cookies and/or device identifiers to serve ads based on users' past visits to our website. Visitors can opt out of Google's use of cookies or device identifiers by visiting Google's Ads Settings. Alternatively, visitors may opt out of a third-party vendor's use of cookies by visiting the Network Advertising Initiative opt-out page or control the use of device identifiers by using their device’s settings.

We will never sell any of your personal data to a third party. However, in order for us to provide our services to you, we share some of your personal data with our trusted third-party service providers, as detailed below. Whenever we share your personal data, we put safeguards in place which require these organisations to keep your data safe and to ensure that these organizations do not use your personal data for their own purposes.

Basically, there are just five places where we keep our data related to customers:

4.1. Customer Relationship Management platform

We make use of Salesforce for our Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Salesforce is the world’s leading provider of CRM-solutions and maintains the highest level of security related to the storage of data and privacy of customer data. 

In our Salesforce database we keep company and contact data, related to our actual customers; clients who have made use of our (paid) services. Core data includes (as mentioned before) name, position, organization, organization type, organization address, business email address, phone number, purchasing history. In cases of sponsorship negotiations and advance account management, we might store records and logs of email conversations and written summaries of phone conversations (we do not record or transcribe any such conversation). 

4.2. Marketing Automation environment

For our email marketing and marketing automation, we make use of Pardot, which is part of the Salesforce ecosystem and enjoys the same level of security. 

In our Pardot database we keep data on “prospects”, which are prospective clients we interact with, who may or may not have made a purchase with us. Here we keep the necessary personal data for reaching out with relevant and personalized content: name, position, organization, organization type, organization address, business email address, phone number, regional & topical interests (if freely indicated), country (if freely indicated), language preference (if freely indicated), and email list subscriptions (if opted in freely). Additionally, here we keep track on basic analytics with regard to interaction with our emails, web-forms and web-pages. 

We employ the common method of “lead scoring”, which means as much as that prospects automatically get points assigned in various categories related to our services, upon different types of interaction with our content. This enables us to assess which prospects would actually benefit from personalized reach-out, if they have shown a considerable amount of interest in a certain service or product. 

4.3. Ticketing services

For the sale of event entry tickets, we make use of the ecommerce platform Xing, whose registration modules we integrate on our websites. The only data we keep on record in the Xing platform, is the personal data necessary for invoicing. We do not keep any payment details on record. 

4.4. Customer Satisfaction measurement

In order to evaluate and improve our services, we perform event evaluations after each event we organize. We keep very limited data (name, position, organization & business email address) related to these surveys, with the exclusive aim of following up with clients that explicitly indicate interest in related services in the survey. Additionally we may use quotes - as explicitly indicated in the survey - from the survey for promotional purposes, but these are always made anonymous. 

4.5. Website Analytics Tool

As most of our global industry peers, we resort to Google Analytics for insights into website visitation and behaviour. We, however, do not make use of any of their advanced personalized and demographic capabilities and only use randomized data and insights. In that sense, we do not keep any personal data related to our prospects and clients in our Google Analytics environment. 

4.6. Third Parties

As a general rule, we do not share your personal data with any third parties. We do not directly resell or distribute your personal data and don’t make it available for advertising or other commercial endeavours. The only exceptions to this are:

• After each event we make a participant list available to event sponsors. This only relates to attendees of our events and is limited to name, position, organization, organization type and business email address. 
• Following webinars, virtual sessions and digital content distribution (eg. white papers, data overviews), we - upon request - provide involved webinar speakers and co-authors with a limited overview of interaction insights. This list excludes actual contact details and is strictly limited to name, position and organization. In case of reasonable and concrete interest, we might make individual introductions between these parties, with the sole purpose of direct outreach and clear prohibition of list subscription and mass emailings.
  • Only in the concrete cases where we include an opt-in option in a form related to content downloads or webinar registration, do we also share contact details, such as e-mail addresses with related, clearly-communicated co-authors, co-creators or sponsors for marketing purposes on their end. In those individual cases, the related form includes a clear opt-in check box, a clear explanation and information on who it's being shared with. 
• Following virtual events, we - upon request - provide involved partners, such as high-ranking asset owners, with a limited list of those who interacted with their content. This list excludes actual contact details and is strictly limited to name, position and organization.

You have a number of rights relating to your personal information and what happens to it. You are entitled to:

• have your data processed in a fair, lawful and transparent way;
• be informed about how your personal data is being used, an example being this privacy policy;
• access personal data we hold about you;
• require us to correct any mistakes in your personal data;
• require us to delete personal data concerning you in certain situations where there is no good reason for us to continue to process it;
• request that we transfer your personal data to you or another service provider in a simple, structured format;
• object at any time to processing of your personal data for direct marketing purposes;
• object to automated decision making which produces legal effects concerning you or similarly significantly affects you;
• object in certain other situations to our continued processing of your personal data; and
• otherwise restrict or temporarily stop our processing of your personal data in certain circumstances.

If you no longer wish to be contacted by us about our products or services, or for other marketing purposes, you can amend your preferences or unsubscribe by contacting us. Alternatively, you can access the email preference center to update your preference, or simply follow the unsubscribe link provided in emails you receive from us.

We want to ensure that all the information we have about our customers is factually correct and up to date. If you find that the personal data we have about you is inaccurate or needs updating (for instance, you may have changed your name or address) then please contact us so that we can correct it.

Security of your personal data

We take the security of your personal data very seriously. We have implemented various strategies, controls, policies and measures to keep your data secure and keep these measures under close review. We protect your data by using encryption techniques and we use other safeguards such as firewalls and password protection. This means that your data is protected and only accessible by co-workers who need it to carry out their job responsibilities. We also ensure that there are strict digital physical controls in our building which restricts access to your personal data to keep it safe.

Retention of your personal data

In broad terms, we will only retain your personal data for as long as is necessary for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy. This means that the retention periods will vary according to the type of the data and the reason that we have the data in the first place.

We have procedures in place regarding our retention periods which we keep under review taking into account our reasons for processing your personal data and the legal basis for doing so.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make significant changes we will let you know but please regularly check this policy to ensure you are aware of the most updated version.

This Privacy Policy was last updated on 9 December 2021.