How GDPR law will affect promotional product marketing
In present digital world, your personal data is
currently being collected by the companies at an incredible rate. Whether it is
a website you use, any calls that you make, any place you visit or any image
you share, all are recorded as well as measured. They leave a digital footprint
which is becoming a prized resource for the companies. Since personal data is
very valuable, it is also vulnerable to various kinds of theft as well as
misuse, and this has resulted in customers demanding to know more about how
companies are using as well as storing their personal data. Overall, the
customers are no longer convinced that companies are taking enough measure to
protect their data. The people who use customer data don’t understand how they
should be using it. It is important that some measures need to be taken to
regulate the management of the customers’ personal data in order to protect the
interests of the customers as well as police these companies which are
collecting, storing and using the data. That’s why the European Union introduced GDPR in 2018 which is a new set of laws that are designed to
safeguard the personal data of the customers as well as inform the decisions of
the different marketers in its member states. It is going to affect the
marketing scenario especially the promotional product marketing. Before, we go
into details of how these changes will come, let’s look at what GDPR is?
GDPR
GDPR stands for General Data Protection Regulation
which is a new digital privacy regulation which was recently introduced. It
standardises a huge range of various privacy rules and legislations all across
the EU into one central regulations set which will protect the customers in all
of its member states.
It means that the companies will have to build
privacy settings into their different digital products as well as websites and
they need to make them switched on by default. Companies will also be required
to regularly undertake and conduct different privacy impact assessments as well
as strengthen the method they seek the permission to use the data along with
document these methods of how they use the data and also improve the way they
actually communicated a different type of data breaches.
In an overview, GDPR may seem a little bit extreme,
especially for small businesses. However, there are only three key areas where
the marketers have to worry about which are data permission, data focus and
data access.
Important Aspects of GDPR
Data permission is the way the companies manage the
email opt-ins, the people who actually request to receive a different type of
promotional material. One can’t assume that all the people want to be
contacted. In the coming future, they have to express consent in a particularly
freely given, informed, specific and unambiguous manner which will be
reinforced by a certain clear affirmative action.
This means that different leads, partners,
customers etc. will have to physically confirm that they desire to get
contacted. The companies need to make sure that the customers want them to
actively seek and provide them permission. Therefore, a pre-ticked box which
will opt them in automatically will have to go, and the opt-ins have to be a
deliberate choice. When it comes to promotional product marketing, the
customers have to give their consent to receive promotional product from the
companies. Also, rather than assuming that the visitors of the website who fill
out any web form want to receive marketing emails or any promotional product, companies need to ask the visitors to
specifically opt-in to the promotional product newsletters by ticking the right
sign up box.
However, there is some unmitigated things like
refer a friend programs.
Generally, refer a friend programs actually work
when any customer enters his friend’s email address to claim any offers such as
discount, promotional product etc. Once the customer has entered his friend’s
email address, an email is sent automatically from the company to that
particular friend without obtaining any explicit consent from that person to
contact them. These types of emails are generally notifications instead of
promotional. Providing this type of data is neither stored or even processed
hence it is considered GDPR compliant. However, in case the data is stored as
well as used for marketing communications then the company will be in
violation. It means that no type of marketing communications can be sent out by
the company to the referee’s email address.
Another important aspect is Data Access. The
inherent right of the customers to be forgotten has become among the most
talked about EU rulings. It provides the people with an ability to remove
outdated or inaccurate personal data, and this is being implemented by
different companies such as Google who were made to remove different pages from
its own search engine results to comply with the norms.
The GDPR introduction provides the customers with a
method to gain even more control of how their own data is being collected as
well as used which includes the ability to both access as well as remove it.
As a marketer, the company will be responsible for
making sure that their users can easily gain access to their data as well as
remove consent for the usage of the data.
Also, this can be quite straightforward as it includes an unsubscribe link within the email marketing template of a company and linking to a
particular user profile which allows the customers to manage their own email
preferences. It will give control to the customers whether they want any email
of any company offering the promotional product. This way the promotional
product marketing will be highly affected. The companies need to get explicit
consent to use the data in order to offer promotional products.
Data focus is also a major concern. As marketers,
companies collect more data from their customers than they actually require.
Considering this in mind, GDPR makes the company to legally justify any
processing of the personal data that is collected by it. This actually means
that the company have to focus on the data which it requires and not ask for
additional data. They have to avoid collecting unnecessary data and stick to
the basics. This way the companies can only gain access to the data which allow
them to offer certain promotional products which actually offers any utility to
the customers according to the data they collect.