Several ideas about GDPR may be flying in your mind. You may want to find out how GDPR affects your marketing policies. Is it necessary to reconsider your digital marketing strategy to comply with GDPR? Most importantly, how to comply with GDPR policies?
What is GDPR?
GDPR is known as the General Data Protection Regulation. The implementation of the EU GDPR aims to protect the personal data and privacy of EU residents. Personal data can be the user's name, email, gender, age, IP address, location data, etc. The regulations strictly control the collection and use of online personal information.
GDPR has been implemented since May 25, 2018, and its ultimate goal is to minimize the risk of online data leakage. In addition, fines for violating the GDPR can be as high as 20 million euros, accounting for 4% of the organization's global annual turnover in the previous fiscal year (whichever is higher).
What Are the Effects of GDPR on Marketers?
As we all know, as an online marketer, digital marketing is to use search engines, emails, social media, websites, or any other digital channels to interact with existing and potential customers.
In addition, you may realize that digital marketing is mainly data-driven. In short, the starting material of any marketing campaign is personal data. Your marketing strategy’s main purpose is to convert as many potential customers as possible into paying customers. Therefore, you may track and collect consumer data to keep track of their options and understand what is crucial to them. Therefore, you can promote products or services to your audience based on their specific needs.
But what happens if this data collection is not managed well? Customers’ personal data can easily end up in the wrong hands. As a result, your customers will lose their trust in you, and they may be reluctant to do business with you.
GDPR has brought about a huge shift in the way online entrepreneurs and digital marketers drive. This regulation implements many data security and privacy policies to ensure a regulatory environment for personal data flow within the EU. According to GDPR, marketers must acquire the precise consent of individuals to gather or proceeding their data in any way.
If you are a digital marketer, you should probably seek answers to the following questions in order to adhere to the GDPR obligations.
- Do you collect data from EU residents? If not, do you plan to collect their data along the route?
- What kind of data is attained?
- How long will their data be kept?
- Who do you share data with and why?
- Will the data be shared with any third parties? If yes, is it compliant with GDPR?
By studying the above lists, you can roughly understand how to update the privacy policy to address the GDPR requirements. In addition, other factors must be considered.
9 Tips for Marketers to Comply With GDPR
Update Your GDPR Privacy Policy
Always remember to update the privacy policy with all the details related to your audience. You must tell them why you gather their personal data, how you will be using them, who you will be sharing the data with and how long will it be kept, etc.
Obtain Clear Consent From Customers
If customer data is collected for many different purposes, consent must be obtained for each purpose separately. For example; if you want to obtain customer personal information for two different goals (such as sending commercial marketing emails or processing their data for research purposes), you need to add a separate checkbox and identify the exact purpose to obtain their consent.
In addition, please obtain the customer's explicit consent before allowing the customer to click the "submit" button on the registration or any other contact form.
Make Sure Your Online Advertising Strategy Is Consistent With GDPR
You may use cookies from the third party for remarketing or retargeting campaigns to connect with people through advertisements or personally or through third-party social media networks, etc.
In order to comply with the requirements of the GDPR, please make sure that you have gathered customer consent before using any type of cookie to collect personal data. The purpose of these cookies is for marketing techniques (such as behavioral advertising).
Set Your Google Analytics Account Available for GDPR
You will use a blog site to produce articles as part of a content marketing plan. In addition, if you use Google Analytics on these websites, you are actually obtaining the IP addresses of website visitors to track the consumer’s behavior and personal interests.
Therefore, in order to comply with GDPR requirements, it is recommended that you enable IP anonymization in Google Analytics.
Alternatively, you can use cookie consent to comply with GDPR's cookie use regulations. You can include a cookie consent banner on your website to restrict visitors who visit your website for the first time unless they agree.
Email Marketing Requires Opt-in and Opt-out Options
According to the GDPR, you can only promote your brand or engage by following up you’re your customers through email only after obtaining the customer's consent to contact them. Therefore, before adding an individual to an email marketing list, make sure that the person you created the form has positive consent.
Just like giving an opt-in form, remember to include an easy-to-access opt-out option in your email marketing campaign so that your audience can unsubscribe from the email database at any time. Mail chimp, Mailer Lite, Active Campaign, and other tools will allow you to obtain the GDPR compliance consent of your customers in your marketing activities.
Obtain User Consent Before Authorizing Comments
When attracting viewers on social media platforms or websites, ask for their consent before letting them comment. Tell them whether your website will keep their comments or private details, such as name and IP address. Moreover, allow them to know if their comments are visible to the public.
Every Tools You Use Must Comply With GDPR
Any plugins or tools used to smoothen the marketing activities will need to ensure that they comply with GDPR policies. Remember to mention your use of these tools in the privacy policy document.
Notify Customers of Any Data Breaches
You must report to the Office of the Information Commissioner (ICO) and the data subject within 72 hours if you are doubtful on any type of personal data leakage or breach for immediate actions.
Nominate a Data Protection Officer (DPO) if Needed
A Data Protection Officer will be needed if your marketing involves gathering and processing large amount of consumers’ data. With a DPO, the data flow will be monitoring all the time, as well as maintaining compliance with GDPR policies.
As summary, GDPR refers to a series of relevant regulations formulated by the European Union to protect the privacy and security of the online data of its citizens. If you are a digital marketer, you should not judge it based on the disadvantages of GDPR. And don’t use it as a reason for non-compliance. In fact, GDPR creates a chance for you to define your competitive advantage.
Therefore, while establishing a marketing campaign, please make sure that you reshape your marketing strategy to comply with GDPR requirements. In addition, please try to take proper measures to make data transparency an important part of your marketing procedures. Then, you will be able to promote meaningful customer interactions and attract more valuable potential customers for your brand.
Wrapping Up!
Now that you know why and how you can achieve GDPR compliance don’t forget to share these tips for GDPR compliance on social media.
