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.