Privacy regulations are becoming more complex with external forces like state-by-state policies and COVID-19. GDPR is here to stay, and with time, more and more data privacy regulations will appear in other markets around the world. Businesses must actively integrate consumer privacy into their data practices to eliminate risk and maintain consumer trust.
Since GDPR came in force, the marketing landscape has evolved drastically. In a brief period, all the old standards of how to interact with customer data were no longer relevant, with the ability to collect personal data severely restricted.
Furthermore, any violation of GDPR could result in penalties varying between a few thousands of pounds to millions, eliminating any benefit of using previous techniques to collect customer data at scale.
Many of these regulations were a result of a series of data privacy scandals that affected consumers. These events gave the consumers an idea of how their data was being stored and used in ways without their consent, damaging their trust. This prompted several businesses to re-evaluate how they access, store, and leverage consumer data.
The marketing industry needs to balance their customer’s desire for a frictionless, personalized experience and also treat their data with dignity. The future of data is geared toward openness and transparency.
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The Impact of Increased Data Privacy on Marketing
As per Forrester’s Global Business Technographics Marketing survey, 31 % of the marketing decision-makers had changed their approach to identity resolution in the EU and employed less audience-based digital ad targeting. These changes were a result of the high level of risk associated with leveraging customer data in light of GDPR.
Businesses around the world are increasingly leveraging Media Mix Modeling (MMM) – It takes aggregate media exposure and lines it up with KPIs like web visits and sales conversions to analyse how impactful a certain media buy is.
This may work in theory, but it falls short since its agnostic of how customers actually make decisions. Audiences may not provide the same amount of value to businesses, and they also respond differently to ad buys. In the case of MMM, there’s no reliable way to determine if the brand is reaching high-value customers.
However, brands have found other ways to adapt to these privacy changes – a flexible approach to marketing analytics.
The Need for Flexibility in Data-Driven Marketing Needs
Between a pandemic, new privacy regulations, and social upheaval, businesses need an adaptable approach to marketing analytics that can evolve to match the changes.
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The ever-changing environment can be a hindrance or provide businesses with new opportunities depending on how flexible their marketing analytics capabilities are. Businesses cannot afford to violate privacy regulations or the cost of continually swapping platforms to meet the changing legal environment. This calls for an all-in-one solution.
Data Impactful Campaigns
Businesses need flexible marketing analytics solutions that help them collect data and respect consumer privacy at the same time.
They need to focus on the quality of their data. Under the current data privacy environment, more is not necessarily better. Brands should focus on primarily collecting first-party and zero-party data instead of buying bulk amounts of third-party data. If there is a need for additional second or third-party data to support their models, they can collect it through a reliable, verifiable, and reputable source and keep the data that yields campaign outcomes and are in line with expectations.
