We’re less than a year away from the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) taking effect, and by most accounts, many brands aren’t ready for it. Marketers, in particular, need to be out in front of the changes required for compliance because it is their job that will arguably be upended most by the legislation.
GDPR will redefine, and in some cases prohibit, the use of many of the most basic email and social-media marketing and customer communication tactics. No more tracking online behavior anonymously or conspicuously without consent. No more collecting and using demographic data without consent. No more using location without consent.
Like it or not, regulators have made it clear: consent will be the only key to unlock the door to the customer, and if the customer wants to shut it at anytime during the engagement, the brand must not insert its foot next to the doorjamb.
Marketers are grudgingly scrambling to formulate sophisticated “opt-in”–based marketing strategies and approaches to ensure compliance, but these changes are likely accompanied by groans behind the closed doors of their offices—let’s face it: it’s much easier operationally to retarget and mass-spray a large prospect base via an email blast than to tailor proposals to individual customers for their correspondence buy-in.