There is much rumbling and grumbling going on about the imminent arrival of GDPR in May 2018. Once the new regulation is introduced, organisations will have to demonstrate a higher standard of customer consent, or prove they have been through a thorough and well documented process of weighing up their ‘legitimate interest’ to harness data against the individual’s right to privacy.
Any breach of the new regulation could lead to a substantial fine. Already a number of organisations are beginning to say that staying compliant could prove painful, especially when the practical interpretation of the law remains frustratingly opaque. However, the new law does no more than legally enshrine principles that we should all already be following.
The permissive society
To put things into perspective, let’s go back in time to 1999. Yes, you were probably still at school then, but bear with me. Seth Godin published a book that year called ‘Permission Marketing’ in which he argued that traditional mass marketing was failing. He talked about an increasingly fragmented media world, and a rising volume of advertising messages, each trying to interrupt and gain the attention of consumers. Godin believed that as advertising became ever more intrusive to compete for our declining attention spans and assaulted us from every angle, consumers would simply become desensitized and switch off.
If that was true in 1999, it must be even more so today. But it is Godin’s solution to this crisis that is particularly relevant now. Godin argued that marketers needed to take a new approach and ask consumers for their consent to marketing communications in return for receiving relevant messages. He called this approach ‘Permission Marketing.’ Here’s his hypothesis:
“The alternative is Permission Marketing, which offers the consumer an opportunity to volunteer to be marketed to. By only talking to volunteers, Permission Marketing guarantees that consumers pay more attention to the marketing message. It allows marketers to calmly and succinctly tell their story, without fear of being interrupted by competitors or Interruption Marketers. It serves both consumers and marketers in a symbiotic exchange.”
-Seth Godin, Permission Marketing, 1999.
Godin’s vision of permission-based marketing may be simplistic, but it’s still very attractive. Most marketers in charge of a customer database pay lip service to the idea that what they are doing is ‘relationship’ marketing. In other words, they ask customers and prospects to exchange marketing permissions for benefits such as loyalty rewards, special offers, advance notice of sales and new product launches.
If you’re happy with the concept of ‘relationship’ or ‘permission’ marketing then you’ll probably have no great problem with the principles of GDPR. That’s because GDPR is simply a law that makes sure that all one-to-one marketing is voluntary and permission based, and is a fair exchange by organisations that respect individual’s data in return for permission to market to them in line with their preferences.
Easier said than done
The problem for many marketers, however, is that there can be a big difference between what marketing departments said they were doing to and what large organisations have actually done. Lots of companies talk a good game about CRM, but in reality many have practised the three I’s: Irritating Inbox Interruption. These are companies that have:
· Had a sales culture that meant taking a quantity over quality approach to building databases.
· Used techniques to gather permissions that are a long way from being clear, specific, unambiguous or granular.
· Made little or no effort to understand what individual customers want, but simply bombarded the lot of them because direct marketing and specifically email make it inexpensive to do so.
· Adopted the ‘the more the merrier’ approach to frequency of communication, whether customers like it or not.
· Made no attempt to create a meaningful value exchange.
Of course, GDPR doesn’t guarantee that all of these poor practices will evaporate overnight on the 25th May 2018, but it does make it more likely. For example:
· Quality over quantity: The threat of huge fines for getting data and permissions wrong brings the issue of customer data right to the top table of businesses. This should refocus companies on quality not quantity, and prompt them to see their database as a precious pool of prospects and customers where they have the opportunity to cultivate loyalty, not a volume channel that can be taken for granted.
· Proper permissions: Businesses will now have to tell customers why they want their data, and what they are going to do with it. They’re going to have to think this through more clearly than ever before, and present a clear value exchange or loyalty contract to customers.
· Relevance: The need for specific consent creates an expectation that customers will receive relevant offers, not junk. It gives impetus to relationships where customers tell us more about what they want, in return for more relevant marketing.
· No more ‘one way street’: The concept of legitimate interest, and the requirement that consent needs to be renewed or refreshed, both rebalance the relationship between company and customer. Hopefully, marketers will be forced to genuinely ask themselves, ‘Would I be happy to receive this?’
Make it meaningful
Adapting to GDPR isn’t just an opportunity to get a grip on permission marketing. It also supports a bigger strategic idea: that brands can evolve from bluntly selling to people, to embracing the goal of making their customers’ lives easier.
Every business puts their brand on a pedestal, but research by Havas shows that people wouldn’t care if 74% of brands disappeared. The brands that people do care about have made themselves meaningful to their customers. We believe in creating meaningful brands, and meaningful relationships start with an attractive value exchange, voluntary entered into by customers. And now GDPR is focusing marketers’ minds on the need to gain customers’ consent to enter into such relationships.
Permission Marketing’s time has come
Complying with GDPR will not be easy. Telling people how we want to user their data in a way that is simple and clear, yet also specific and granular, and in a way that doesn’t deter most customers from opting in, is a big challenge. But the rewards of more meaningful relationships should be considerable.
Getting the balance right will allow us to communicate, and hopefully converse, with people who are genuinely interested in what we have to offer. In a world where mass marketing is increasingly ignored, digital advertising is increasingly blocked, and unwanted messages are quickly binned, perhaps the legal requirements of GDPR will help us achieve Godin’s vision from 1999 of customers ‘Volunteering to be marketed to’, allowing ‘Marketers to calmly and succinctly tell their story, without fear of being interrupted by competitors or Interruption Marketers’.
Can we help?
If you have any concerns about your data asset and think Havas helia could help with your GDPR compliance, call us on 01285 644744, email us at enquiries@havasheliacirencester.com or visit our website at www.havasheliacirencester.com
David Burrows
Planning Director, Havas helia Cirencester
