What is PECR?

PECR — the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations — governs unsolicited electronic communications in the UK, including marketing email and calls. It sits alongside UK GDPR; cold outreach has to satisfy both.

Its key feature for B2B is the corporate-subscriber rule: the consent requirement for marketing email applies to individual subscribers, not to companies with separate legal personality. That is the door that makes most B2B cold email permissible — provided you also clear the GDPR lawful-basis test.