Privacy Policy
This policy explains how Callum Jones, trading as Solar Mailshot ("we", "us") uses personal data. We are the data controller. It covers the people who use Solar Mailshot for their business (installers) and the homeowners who receive letters through it.
Part A: installers who use Solar Mailshot
What we collect
- Account and onboarding details: your name, company name and address, role, email address, phone number, password (stored only as a secure hash) and how you heard about us.
- Your choices: marketing email preference, whether we may call you, and cookie choice, with the date you made them, and which version of each agreement you accepted and when.
- Business records: searches, campaigns, letter designs, orders, credits and payments (Stripe holds card details, not us).
- Usage: the steps you take in the service (for example searching, saving a campaign, paying, approving letters) and errors, so we can support you and improve the service. Page views and time on page are only recorded if you accept analytics cookies.
Why we use it, and our lawful basis
- To provide the service and take payment: performance of our contract with you.
- To keep accounts and records secure, prevent fraud and meet tax and accounting rules: legal obligation and legitimate interests.
- To understand how the service is used and improve it: legitimate interests (and your consent for analytics cookies).
- To text or email you when a homeowner sends you an enquiry, if you turn these alerts on: performance of our contract with you. You can change or switch off these alerts on your dashboard.
- To phone you to ask how you are finding Solar Mailshot: only if you tick the box at sign-up (your consent). You can withdraw this at any time by telling us.
- To send you product news, tips and offers by email: as you signed up as a customer, we may email you about similar services unless you opt out (the "soft opt-in"). The box is ticked at sign-up and you can untick it then, or unsubscribe at any time from any email or your account.
Who we share it with
Service providers who act on our instructions: hosting (Contabo, on servers in the UK), Stripe (payments), Stannp (printing and posting), Resend (sending emails), Twilio (sending text messages), Ideal Postcodes (addresses), Google (roof and location data), Anthropic (writing personalised letter text from property facts), Mapbox (maps), and a notification service we use to alert our own team about account events (for example a new sign-up or a paid order). We do not sell your data. Some of these providers are based in the United States or use servers outside the UK. Where personal data leaves the UK we rely on the UK's adequacy regulations (including the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, where the provider is certified) or the UK International Data Transfer Addendum.
How long we keep it
- Account details: while your account is open and for 6 years after it closes, for legal and accounting reasons.
- Usage records: 24 months.
- Marketing preferences: kept so we can honour them.
Part B: homeowners who receive a letter
If you received a letter, it was sent to your address by or on behalf of a local solar installer named on the letter, using Solar Mailshot.
Where your address came from
We use open government roof data (LiDAR), open address reference data and property energy certificates to estimate which homes may suit solar, and we buy the postal address from a licensed address provider. Letters are addressed to "The Householder" unless an installer has supplied your name from their own records. We do not use energy certificate data to address letters and we do not show it to installers.
Why we used it, and our lawful basis
Our legitimate interest, and the installer's, in telling nearby homeowners about solar that may suit their home. We have balanced this against your interests: we use only property information and your address, we do not use it for anything else, and you can stop further letters at any time.
Who is responsible: for letters sent through Targeted Mailshot and Tell the Neighbours, we decide which homes are selected and we are the controller of that data. For letters sent to an installer's own list, the installer is the controller and we act for them. If you contact the installer, the installer is responsible for how they use your details.
Stopping letters
To stop receiving letters sent through Solar Mailshot, contact optout@solarmailshot.co.uk with your address. We will add it to our suppression list so no installer using Solar Mailshot writes to it again. Where an installer sends letters to named people from their own list, they must also screen that list against the Mailing Preference Service.
How long we keep it
Your address, the roof data about your home and a copy of the letter are deleted automatically 12 months after the last letter sent to your home through Targeted Mailshot or Tell the Neighbours. Letters to an installer's own list are deleted from our systems 30 days after they are posted. If you opt out, we keep your address on our suppression list for as long as we operate, so that you are not written to again.
Personal web pages and enquiries
If your letter has a QR code it leads to a page about your home. If you send an enquiry from that page we pass it to the installer, acting for them. We record that a page was visited, but no tracking cookies are set on these pages. If the installer has added a video, YouTube or Vimeo may set cookies once you press play.
Part C: visitors to our website and blog
Our website (solarmailshot.co.uk) and its blog set no cookies and use no analytics, advertising or tracking. Our web server does not keep a log of visits to them.
To show the pages, your browser fetches fonts from Google Fonts and some code from the jsDelivr and Tailwind CSS content delivery networks. As with any site you load files from, these providers receive your IP address and browser details in order to deliver them, under their own privacy policies.
When you sign up or sign in, you are using the installer app, which is covered by Part A and our Cookie Policy.
Part D: your rights
You can ask to see the personal data we hold about you, ask us to correct or delete it, object to our use of it (including for marketing, which we will always stop), or ask us to restrict it. Contact privacy@solarmailshot.co.uk. If you are unhappy with our response you can complain to the ICO at ico.org.uk.
Terms · Privacy · Data Processing Agreement · Acceptable Use · Cookies