B2B lead generation in Germany is surrounded by legal uncertainty. Many sales teams either avoid it entirely out of fear of GDPR violations, or ignore the regulations and risk costly warnings. The truth is more nuanced — and B2B lead generation is largely legal when done correctly.
The legal basis: Legitimate interest (Art. 6 GDPR)
B2B lead generation is based on legitimate interest (Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f GDPR). The key conditions:
- You contact companies, not private individuals
- The contact is professionally relevant (your offer fits the company's work)
- You use only publicly accessible contact data
- You offer an opt-out in every communication
What data is allowed?
Permitted: Company name, address, general email (info@, kontakt@), phone number from the imprint or Google Maps entry.
Sensitive: Personal employee emails (max.mustermann@firma.de) — these are personal data under GDPR. Contact via personal email requires careful case-by-case consideration.
Cold emailing: What applies
Under the UWG (German Unfair Competition Act), unsolicited commercial email to businesses is allowed if:
- The offer is relevant to the company's business
- The email clearly identifies the sender
- An unsubscribe option is provided
anilead.io and GDPR compliance
anilead.io exclusively processes publicly accessible data from Google Maps and company websites. No personal profiles, no social media scraping. All data is stored in European data centers. This makes the generated leads legally compliant from day one.