This is a part of our ongoing GDPR series. This specific article focuses on how GDPR will affect marketers when it goes into affect in May 2018.
We’re less than 100 days away from the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) becoming enforceable, and many marketers are currently discovering that their methods and strategies will be affected. Marketers have been increasingly relying on data and personalization to increase qualified leads and improve the buyer journey. So what does this have to do with the GDPR? In April of 2016, the European Union adopted the GDPR with the intent to empower individuals to take control of the use of their personal data. This new regulation will impact the way marketers gain access and consent to and use personal data for everything from email campaigns, to chatbots, and remarketing. The GDPR becomes enforceable May 25, 2018, and failure to comply with these new regulations could result in “fines of up to €20 million or 4% of their global annual revenue—whichever is greater”; it also depends on the violation. (Hubspot)
If this news to you and you’re feeling crunched on time, find comfort in the results from a 2017 survey from TrustArc, which reports 61% of US companies and 64% of UK companies surveyed had not begun implementation of their GDPR compliance programs. Also note that if your business is based outside of the EU, but it controls or processes the data of EU citizens, the GDPR will apply.
In our premier post in a new series about how the GDPR will affect marketers, we are going to outline how it affects specific areas of marketing and what you can do to get in compliance.
First up: Don’t let the GDPR discourage you. These new regulations aren’t meant to scare marketers or provide a roadblock to capturing leads. Currently, marketers capture a lead’s personal data in a number of ways, like email and webinar sign-ups, forms to download a resource like a white paper or ebook, or to request a demo of a product or service. Where the GDPR will come in is to ensure there is consent for user data and provide users the ability to control what is done with that data.
Marketers might use personal information in a number of ways—to send product and company updates or for surveys, for example. The GDPR will require businesses to provide users or subscribers the ability to control how their data is used—or forgotten. These new regulations welcome the opportunity for marketers to prioritize scrubbing email lists across all platforms (ESPs, CRMs,) and more strategically segment subscribers—like with cleaner email lists, for example—so they are receiving information you know they want to consume—because they’ve specifically stated it.
If a user signs up to receive updates about a product or service, under the GDPR the company must provide users the option to control what type of updates they receive. Take the following example from an article from SuperOffice (see graphic below.) Under the GDPR, businesses will be required to have users “easily access their data and remove consent for its use.” Twitter, for example, provides the option for users to remove their data from specific updates:
With these new regulations on how data will be used, marketers have the opportunity to implement best practices that will result in a more strategic, personalized approach to their audience. This will drive a long-tail effect of building better customer relationships, as well as gaining a more accurate view of your customers’ behavior and needs.
The GDPR's weighing on much more than data mapping & consent tracking for organizations. For many enterprises and organizations of smaller sizes, Data Processing Agreements become a massive hurdle to achieving full GDPR compliance. Register below: