Marketers Guide To Data Privacy
Most marketers understand the value of actionable data. It helps us reach the right customers at the right time, measure the effectiveness of our efforts using analytics, and develop targeting and propensity models. With data, we can reach better quality prospects and leads, offer them a personalized experience at the right time, and with the right offer; all within our marketing budget.
10 Steps to Develop Your Privacy Strategy
1. Assign internal ownership of data privacy strategy.
Is it the job of IT Department, Marketing Department, Legal or Operations? With such new concepts of data privacy and regulations, it’s no wonder that most organizations have not considered who should bear the responsibility, and why most organizations have not already implemented a data privacy standard and practice.
2. Determine what laws apply to you.
New privacy regulations continue to develop across the world. GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) in the EU, which by some standards is considered the most stringent regulation with privacy by design and by default. GDPR requires a prompt to ask users for consent before collecting any online audience members data.
3. Update your privacy policy, terms and conditions and make it easy to create Data Subject Access
If you own a website or app, then you most likely are processing user data. You are processing user data if you use sign-up forms, newsletters, or third-party services such as Google Analytics, social media widgets, CRMs, or have login buttons... Even IP addresses are considered personal data!
A Privacy Policy is a statement or a legal document that states how a company or website collects, stores, processes, and maintains data of its online visitors.
4. Know what cookies you have on your website and categorize them.
Marketers have become reliant on cookies to deliver personalized messaging to their audiences. As 3rd party cookies depreciate sometime in 2023, 1st party cookies will still have a significant role beyond 2023.
First-party cookies are directly created and managed by the organization that manages a website while 3rd party cookies are generated by other organizations (a 3rd party) different from the website owner/manager. Both 1st party and 3rd party cookies help marketers keep track of user activity, preferences, and visits.
5. Implement a cookie banner on your website(s).
Besides knowing what cookies are on your website before asking users for cookie consent, having a cookie banner makes it easy for them to know and understand which cookies you are asking consent for, what they are used for and what vendors you share that data with.
6. Develop your first-party data strategy.
A first-party data strategy is the best way to counter third-party cookie depreciation.
Safari and Firefox have already stopped allowing 3rd party browser cookies. With 56% of browser market share, Google has announced they will be ending 3rd party cookies in 2023. This disruption will affect targeting, measurement, and attribution. Strategizing and implementing a comprehensive approach to privacy that follows the entire lifecycle of collecting, managing, and utilizing data and data requests is integral. It can help companies build their intelligence on behavior patterns among consumers who use their products or services.
7. Know what vendors you share data with, and how you can distribute consumer opt-in and opt-out simultaneously to all your vendors.
Most marketers share data across their platforms and tech stacks. For example, email subscription management, CRMs, mar-tech, social platforms, programmatic ad platforms... It is important for marketers to know where their audience data is being stored, shared, and used. If a consumer opts out or opts in, that privacy choice needs to be passed down the line to the vendors you share data with
8. Develop a DSAR strategy.
A survey from 2019 found 62% of London enterprises experienced a surge in DSARs over the first year of GDPR kicking in. Now new research claims substantial costs are involved to manage these requests. “Companies with more than 5,000 employees can spend as much as $2,136,065 on responding to data subject access requests”, according to research commissioned by Guardum, a data-security firm. “75% of data protection officers polled say they struggle to meet data compliance obligations whilst working remotely” Guardum continued.
9. Develop a Consent Preference Management strategy with a single point of truth.
Your consent preference management solution should maintain a single version of truth for all individual consent preferences within your company – the ultimate source of truth for consent preference data.
10.Implement a CDP and other tech depending on your needs.
Customer Data Platforms or Customer Intelligence Platforms allow marketers to collect, unify and analyze customer data. CDPs allow companies to turn customer data into a 360-degree view of each individual customer to make better business decisions.
