Don’t worry. This isn’t another piece on how to comply with GDPR. Nor am I going to discuss and review the principles and policy behind GDPR. Let’s assume for the purposes of this article that most companies will have at least made their best efforts to become compliant by next May.
Instead, I am making predictions on who will benefit and who will struggle with the effects of GDPR.
The EU claims that businesses will save €2.3 billion a year from simplified rules. But even if this turns out to be true, the joy will not be evenly spread. Every far-reaching change in the business climate, including significant new regulations, results in winners and losers. And it’s important to remember that the impact will not just be a reflection of compliance with the line item regulations. The overall business context will change – think back to Sarbanes-Oxley for an example of where new laws were designed to modify the behaviour and culture of companies.
So it is with GDPR – perhaps especially so, given the focus on consent and the ambiguity surrounding ‘legitimate interest’ as a reason for contact engagement without permission. The C-suite at businesses and organisations will likely take away from all they have heard about GDPR just three major principles:
It’s these three points that will stick in their minds and trickle down to marketing operations. The overall approach is therefore likely to be conservative, ‘staying on the safe side’ with, of course, a small number of transgressors or companies just hoping for the best.
In this environment, some marketers, product, service and solution providers will come out better than others. Some solutions and marketing strategies and tactics will thrive and some will decline. This is my take on who and what they will be and why.
There is a lot of focus on preference centres, keeping detailed records of acquired consent and data governance and security. This demands a robust technology infrastructure even before you start marketing to customers and prospects – and, to keep them engaged, you will need the tools to make marketing more personalised.
Who can afford all this technology? Big companies. And then factor in the staff time needed to re-calibrate marketing operations and develop new processes.
The techniques and tactics needed to get prospects to engage proactively – and then to identify them when they do – are obviously not new. But there will now be a premium on these skills and solution sets. Web designers, search specialists, creative teams and software and service providers that can identify visitors to websites will do well, but will need to up their game to make sure all inbound activity is optimised.
There will be a continued move towards ever more relevant content. Publishers, media groups, research companies and specialist content providers like Aberdeen (which has a GDPR briefing in London on September 19) will work with marketers to customise content as much as possible.
With the switch from email (see below) programmatic advertising will play a larger role. So, as well as being a source of content, publishers should get increased revenue from advertising spend.
The days of mass emailing, already over in the minds of marketing theorists, will gradually disappear in practice. In time, email will find its right level – just as direct mail has. But it’s not 2003 anymore. It’s not even 2013.
This may seem controversial as, for many, ABM (account-based marketing) is only just gathering speed. But it will become harder. By definition ABM is proactive not reactive, ‘push’ not ‘pull’. The basis of ABM is to identify the right accounts, then engage with the right contacts in the decision-making group. Email often followed by phone is the traditional way of doing this. But what if you don’t have the right permission? If one contact at an organisation has opted-in, will it be regarded as ‘legitimate interest’ to email their colleagues? Of course, you can and should be going to great lengths now to get opt-ins – but it is hard work and expensive.
Smaller companies will struggle. Everything described above will cost time, money and resources that smaller companies typically don’t have or haven’t needed up until now. I am sure that, over time, technology will become cheaper and techniques refined, so that SMBs can operate more efficiently. But that may take a while.
In the short term – pre-May 2018 – skilled call centres will be able to support acquiring permission. Going forward, calling will be even more reliant on relevant, permission-based data. Those without the ability to understand data will disappear – and yes, there are still some around.
Businesses with a high customer churn rate need to put great efforts into acquisition. Expensive and difficult at the best of times, this will now be even harder. Utilities, telecommunications companies, media, insurance and some other financial services will have to adjust quickly.
A lot of the words in this article – ‘relevant’, ‘permission’, ‘engagement’, ‘consent’ – have been part of the marketers’ lexicon for decades, to the point where they are really clichés. Undoubtedly, GDPR will give renewed impetus to putting these into effect.
The best case is that marketers will take up the challenge, customer experience will improve and the regulation-averse United States will benefit from some of the best practices. The worst case is that ambiguity around consent will continue, small companies will be overwhelmed and give up on compliance and wait for the worst to happen (or not) and legal enforcement is erratic.
Ho Chi Minh was for some reason asked circa-1965 what he thought the impact of the French Revolution was. He famously replied: “It’s too soon to tell.” We will not have to wait as long to feel the consequences of GDPR.
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Formerly head of key accounts and group managing director, international, at Harte Hanks, Robert Howells served as chairman of the Global Advisory Board at the US DMA. He now helps companies drive revenue and make the right strategic and planning decisions, founded on his decades of experience – supporting marketing services companies, data providers, B2B marketers and other organisations in planning, executing and achieving revenue growth – around the globe. Howells Marketing Consultants: contact Robert Howells here – rlhowells@gmail.com
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