Marketing in a Post-GDPR World!

Marketing in a Post-GDPR World!


The purpose of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is to compel marketers to be more thoughtful, transparent, and respectful of the data they collect and use. Realistically, that means marketers need to take a step back - to stop personalizing every piece of information without regard for what is appropriate for the consumer.

GDPR gives the power to consumers to control the use of their data. Any European consumer can call out any company and ask the company to account for the data they've collected and how it's being used.

To master marketing in post-GDPR world, Gartner analyst Bryan Yeager has said that marketers should elevate the importance of privacy as part of their data-driven initiatives. "Audit your current marketing activities, including what data has been collected and how it's processed. Co-ordinate closely with your legal and privacy teams about your approach. And think about how you can use a pivotal moment like GDPR as a way to engender value and trust in your future engagements with customers", he suggested.

It's very concerning to know that a very whopping 41% of marketers admit to not fully understanding both the GDPR law and the best practices around the use of consumers' personal data.

To quickly check if you're complying with GDPR today, see if you can answer 'Yes' to the following:
  1. You've built privacy settings into the digital products and websites - and have them switched on by default.
  2. You regularly conduct privacy impact assessments, strengthen the way you seek permission to use personal data, document how you use personal data, and improve the way you communicate data breaches.

To put it simply, if you have a list of leads, you can't send them a promotional email UNLESS they have given you consent for it. You can't even send them an email asking if they want to hear more from you, and as such, is a violation of GDPR.

In August 2016, Flybe sent an email to 3.3 million people in their database with the subject line "Are your details correct?". In theory, this sounds like a smart strategy, but unfortunately, these 3.3 million people had previously opted out (unsubscribed) to marketing emails and thereby gave no consent to be contacted. Result? A fine of 70,000 pounds.
Key takeaway: If your customers have opted-out of marketing emails, don't email them - it's as simple as that. You're breaking the law if you do.

Best practices to keep yourself GDPR compliant

1. Signup Forms: 

Don't assume a person wants to receive your future offers just because she made a purchase. Don't assume a person who opts-in for a newsletter subscription also wants all your marketing materials. And please - remove all pre-ticked boxes that seek permission for future contact from your emails.



Consent must be very clear, and the retailer must keep records of consent under the GDPR's accountability principle.

2. Consent Settings

The right to be forgotten has become one of the most talked-about rulings in EU Justice Court history. It gives people the right to have old or false personal data removed, and it has already been implemented with companies like Google, which was forced to remove pages from its search engine results in order to comply.



As a marketer, it will be your responsibility to make sure that your users can easily access their data, and remove consent for its use, in line with the right to be forgotten. 

This can be as simple as including an unsubscribe link within your email marketing template and linking to a user profile that allows users to manage their email preferences (as shown in the example below).



3. Take What You Need

Marketers get greedy when it comes to getting formed filled out by customers. We tend to ask for information that we might not even require. Ask yourself, do I really need to know someone's favorite holiday destination before they subscribe to our newsletter? Probably not.

To stop the collection of unnecessary data, GDPR requires you to legally justify the processing of personal data you collect. Don't worry - this is not very complicated.

What this means is that you need to focus on the data that's really useful to you, and stop asking for the "good to haves". If you really need to know a piece of customer information, and can prove why you need it, then you can continue asking for it. But try to avoid collecting any unnecessary data, and stick with the basics.

Actionable tip for GDPR-compliant marketing


Data collection: If you still buy mailing lists, it's probably a bad idea to continue. In fact, you should dump the data you bought right away, because a single complaint from a customer about a breach of consent can subject you to a penalty of up to 4% of your gross revenue. Instead, start fresh. Find new ways of collecting opt-in data by introducing clear, brief web-forms. 

Scan your list: Go through your data list periodically and remove the data without an record of opting in. For new subscribers. make sure that they want to receive emails from you by sending them a re-confirmation email after they opt-in for a mailing list.

Content marketing: Content is more important than ever in a post-GDPR world. Since you can only send your communications to interested people, you need a lot of content to generate that interest. Also, you can ask customers to subscribe in order to access content like e-books, infographics, webinars and whitepapers.

Pop-ups: Invite website visitors to add themselves to a mailing list by launching a pop-up on your website. The conversion rate of pop-ups is only around 3%, but like other marketing communications such as emails and Facebook ads, if the pop-ups are launched at the right time with the right message, they can give you a higher conversion rate of up to 40%.

Data storage: In a data-conscious world, you cannot afford to keep records in a spreadsheet and manage the data manually. You need a CRM application where you, and your sales team, can keep updating the data and centralizing your data collection. Of course, CRM applications come with a lot of other benefits as well.

Social selling: Since reaching customers over email is subject to some legal restrictions, find new ways of reaching out to them outside the scope of the GDPR law. Educate your sales team on social selling and connecting with customers on social media sites. Social media will also give your salespeople some perspective on your customers and help them approach with the right message.

Push notifications: You may also take a shot at push notifications. These are pop-ups that seek permission from website visitors to send them promotional notifications. One advantage of this is that once the customer allows you to send them push notifications, they will receive notifications from you even after they have closed your website. One disadvantage of push notifications is that they cannot be personalized, since IP addresses are anonymous.

Privacy policy: Update your privacy statement to let people know that you are GDPR compliant. Mention what you do with customer data you collect and that you don't engage in any practices in violation of customer privacy.

Conclusion

Remember, GDPR hasn't been enacted to stop marketers from communicating with customers. Quite the opposite, actually. It's designed to increase the quality of customer data. The best and most resourceful marketers are seeing the bigger picture and recognizing that it's an opportunity to personalize messages for their prospects and customers, rather than using the traditional one-size-fits-all approach to marketing.

The rules of GDPR compliance are quite simple: don't contact someone unless they specifically ask you to. Don't assume they want to hear from you. Don't cold contact them, and don't send them irrelevant information that they didn't request. If you can do all that, then you've done your job in complying with GDPR.

Is your marketing GDPR compliant?

    • Sticky Posts

    • 10 simple e-commerce marketing tips to boost sales

      Congratulations! You've finally set up that e-commerce store you've been thinking about for a long time. Hopefully it wasn't too difficult. Even if it was, the effort will be totally worth it when you start seeing some orders come through. Now that the store is live, let's take a look at some marketing tips you can apply for sales growth. 1. Avoid cart abandonment If you've ever shopped online, you might have added a product to the cart but then decided not to purchase it. This is known as cart abandonment.

    • Marketing in a post COVID-19 world!

      Consumers across countries are increasingly spending more time on a wide variety of digital activities, right from online grocery shopping, to video conferencing, to tele-medicine. There is a good chance that you performed one or more of the following activities during this lockdown, thanks to COVID 19: Cooked a meal Made a TikTok Video Signed up for a remote learning session Consulted a doctor online (or ordered medicines online) Shopped for groceries online A study by Hunter, a food and beverage

    • Inbound Marketing 101: The Foundational Blocks of Inbound Marketing Strategy

      According to a behaviour survey, 68% of the buyers use sources such as blogs to evaluate the product even before considering it. Before buying a product, we do a lot of research to learn more about the product through communities, blogs, social media,

    • How Zylker doubled their webinar registrations!

      Webinars are good educational resources to gather qualified leads for your product. But what if your visitors are dropping off from your webinar landing page without signing up? What more could you do to convert visitors into registrants? This is the

    • The ideology behind why features tell, but benefits sell

      Do you think there's any truth to this? Do features only tell, and benefits sell?  Well, let's see why we should focus on benefits rather than features as the great marketing wizards, David Ogilvy and Steve Jobs proved to be the best examples leveraging

    • Recent Topics

    • Tracking new lead response time

      Hi, I have a team of Sales Development Reps, who have a KPI of responding to a lead within 20 mins or less once it hits the system.  I seem to recall that Zoho CRM had the capability to track this in a previous version, but don't see it anywhere.   It's

    • Search function not working anymore

      Hi! The search function is not working anymore. How can we solve this problem?

    • When converting a lead to an account, the custom mandatory fields in the account are not treated by zoho as mandatory

      In my Account module I have a number of custom fields that I have set as mandatory. When I enter a new customer as a new account they work, I can't save the record without populating them. However when I convert a lead, my CRM users are able to save the

    • Expand Zia's Language Support and AI Capabilities

      Dear Zoho Desk Support, I would like to submit a feature request to improve Zia, the AI-driven support assistant in Zoho Desk. Currently, Zia only supports the English language, while other AI agents such as Gemini, ChatGPT, and Claude can work with a

    • get gettting the days number between two dates with deluge

      I am trying to calculate the days number between 2 specific dates but its not working. PLease help me.

    • How do I add more schedules to Zoho Creator?

      At the moment, the number of schedule calls we have in Zoho Creator are 1800 per month and I was wondering if it was possible to upgrade that amount to something higher. I'd like to know my options as well as the pricing.

    • Conexion CREATOR x CRM

      Buenas tardes, Tengo un problema con un código que crea un registro en CRM. Revisé el CRM para eliminar los campos obligatorios, pero cuando ejecuto el programa, aparece el siguiente mensaje de error: {"code":"MANDATORY_NOT_FOUND","details":{"api_name":"data"},"message":"required

    • Invoices with billable time and expenses

      I cannot seem to get a straight answer. We are looking to create an invoice to send to our clients, but it needs to have the following on it: 1. Billable hours for each employee. All hours for the pay period on one line, by employee. 2. Expenses for each

    • Search Bar Improvement for Zoho Commerce

      Hey everyone, I've been using Zoho Commerce for a bit now, and I think the search bar could really use an upgrade. Right now, it doesn't show products in a dropdown as you type, which would make finding items a lot faster. On Shopify, for example, you

    • Send Whatsapp with API including custom placeholders

      Is is possible to initiate a session on whatsapp IM channel with a template that includes params (placeholders) that are passed on the API call? This is very usefull to send a Utility message for a transactional notification including an order number

    • Can't get form response to populate custom PDF template

      I've created a template and set it to default but can't figure out how to get the response to populate that template. It keeps giving me the default summary.

    • Zoho Sheets not compatible with Excel/Google Sheets

      In order to share a copy of a Zoho sheet with someone that does not use Zoho, it must be downloaded as MS Excel format and then added to an email.  This is a labor intensive, and frankly confusing process.  I have forgotten to do this before, only to

    • Add Ability to Designate Decision Branches as "Error Branches"

      Zoho Flow gives the ability to track down, troubleshoot, and fix errors with the Status and Filter dropdowns in the History tab. This works well for when a "normal" Flow action registers with an error. However, there are other times where it would be

    • Visitors sending message via Whatsapp are not saving on contacts

      Visitors who sends me messages from Whatsapp when i finish the chat do not populate on contacts, how can I add them as contacts?

    • ChatGPT only summarize in English

      Hello i' v enabled chatgpt in salesIQ, it works great inside conversation (revise, Rephrase etc) add tags works well with another language than English. But when I want to summarize it render only in English, despite sales IQ is set to another language.

    • Brand with multiple facebooks pages

      HI, We are a small publisher that has different FaceBook pages for each of our product lines. All are within the same FB account.   Is it possible to add all of these pages to our one brand in zoho social so I orchestrate the posts between the different products?    Cheers, Joe

    • How do I connect Sales IQ to Shopify

      How do I connect Sales IQ to Shopify.    

    • DORA compliance

      For DORA (Digital Operational Resilience Act) compliance, I’ll want to check if Zoho provides specific features or policies aligned with DORA requirements, particularly for managing ICT risk, incident reporting, and ensuring operational resilience in

    • Create Ticket from Chat with Rest API

      Hi to everyone, is possible to create a ticket from Chat with Rest API? In user interface is possible by clicking on the button "Convert chat as a ticket". Anyone know how to do that? Thanks

    • How to send binary data in invokeurl task?

      Hello, I am using Adobe's Protect PDF API. Source: https://developer.adobe.com/document-services/docs/overview/pdf-services-api/ Everything works fine in Postman. But for some reason after encrypting the file, it is empty after password protecting the

    • How Can I Customize Sales Reports in Zoho CRM to Better Track Our Sales Team's Performance?

      Hello everyone, I'm new to using Zoho CRM and need some help with customizing our sales reports. We want to track our sales team's performance more effectively and visualize trends that can inform our strategy. What specific customizations or features

    • Items should display under specific warehouse

      I have configured the multi warehouse but it show all the items under all warehouse which is not correct according to our business logic, so i want that items should only display under that specific warehouse not under all the warehouses not even with zero quantity. Some items should be common but not all so is there any option for that purpose so i can specific the items to its warehouse. Regards

    • Package Dimensions

      Packages need to have dimensions that are sent to carriers in addition to just the weight. Without the package dimensions being transmitted to carriers, the correct dimensional weight is not calculated for the label price, which results in corrections

    • Theft Prevention Sensor Integration in Zoho Inventory

      Is there a way to integrate a theft prevention sensor with Zoho Inventory, so items cannot leave the store unless they've been scanned at checkout? Any insights or existing solutions would be greatly appreciated.

    • Zoho Workplace gets yet another security boost: The addition of Zoho Vault

      Hello Community, Passwords are often the first line of defense, yet they're also one of the most common weak points. We're thrilled to announce that Zoho Vault is now integrated with Zoho Workplace! Zoho Vault Standard is now included at no extra cost

    • "notes"-field in a task to full width?

      Hi, Is there someone that can tell me how to adjust the "notes"-field in a task, to full width? I already played around with 1 or 2 columns, but this has nu effect on the standard width. Thx in advance for your help. Cheers, Ralph.

    • How to download Job Sheets in Zoho FSM?

      Hello, I'd like to download copies of completed job sheets as PDF's for upload to a workdrive to keep an audit record of completed Job checkout sheets. I do not see download of this file type as an option - any help is appreciated!

    • [Webinar] Zoho Writer for law firms and legal professionals

      Are manual processes slowing down your legal practice? Are you ready to simplify document management and free up more time for your team to focus on what truly matters? Join us on January 16, 2025, for an exclusive Zoho Writer webinar designed specifically

    • Introducing Bin Locations In Zoho Inventory

      Hello users, We are excited to let you know that your wait for the Bin Locations feature has now come to an end! Yes, you heard us right! We are here to introduce the much-awaited Bin Locations now in Zoho Inventory. But before we dive into the feature

    • How to send mail with js SDK

      Hell o I'm using https://live.zwidgets.com/js-sdk/1.2/ZohoEmbededAppSDK.min.js, for my widget in CRM (built with sigma) Is it possible to send email from js file, I try ti use that ZOHO.CRM.API.sendMail({ "Entity": "Accounts", "RecordID": sharedVariableEntityId,

    • Cannot add Zoho Forms link to LinkedIn

      Hello, We have encountered a problem where we are unable to share a Zoho Forms link on LinkedIn. This is what we got from LinkedIN, but we have not heard back from Zoho Support as yet, and we are meanwhile stuck... "It seems the URL does not scrape the

    • Feature request - pin or flag note

      Hi, It would be great if you could either pin or flag one or more notes so that they remain visible when there are a bunch of notes and some get hidden in the list. Sometimes you are looking for a particular name that gets lost in a bunch of less important

    • i keep see there is a connetion issue connecting 3rd party api on zoho when using zia

      hi there , i have set up open ai api to zoho zia (copied and pasted to zoho zia) but I keep getting notificaiton "there is a connetion issue connecting 3rd party api on zoho" when using zia on top when click zia and try to type in word there

    • SendMail in CRM Deluge function rejects a validated email address

      In a CRM Deluge function, the email address is considered invalid. Is there another method by which it can be validated? It's unacceptable in my current situation to use either the zoho.loginuserid or adminuserid as the From address.

    • how do i remove a specific Zoho Service from my account

      I no longer need Zoho CRM, ZRM Assist nor ZRM BugTracker. How do I remove them from the list of apps for my account?

    • Build custom AI solutions with Catalyst’s QuickML capabilities in CRM

      Hello everyone, We’re thrilled to announce an improvement for our Zoho CRM Enterprise users: the ability to create custom AI solutions using Catalyst’s QuickML directly from Zoho CRM. As you may already know, Zia, Zoho CRM’s AI-powered assistant, offers

    • Unveiling Cadences: Redefining CRM interactions with automated sequential follow-ups

      Last modified on 01/04/2024: Cadences is now available for all Zoho CRM users in all data centres (DCs). Note that it was previously an early access feature, available only upon request, and was also known as Cadences Studio. As of April 1, 2024, it's

    • Pay Contractor Timesheets

      I have contractors that fill out a timesheet. Each hour must be assigned to a current client. I need the easiest way to get the contracts paid. They are paid on an hourly bases. How can this be done?

    • Set up slack alert based on a field changing from one option to any other

      Hi, I'm trying to set-up a workflow to send a slack alert if a field changes from one option to any other. I've set-up a workflow to trigger on Edit and when a specific field gets modified but the only option I have 'is modified to' when really it should

    • Better UI more user friendly

      Hello everyone, I think all finance apps, especially Zoho Books, would benefit from the following suggestions/ notes: 1. Grouping Fields in Zoho Books: Unlike Zoho CRM, Zoho Books does not seem to have an option to create sections or group fields. This

    • Next Page