What exactly is Data Privacy?

If data is the internet’s currency, data privacy is what prevents its value from being taken. We now use data to gain access to specific items that correspond to our digital experience. However, without some kind of confidentiality, our private data can be used against us by anyone, particularly hackers.

Data privacy is one of the topics on which everyone agrees. However, the extent to which various organisations and individuals will go in order to adhere to data privacy and compliance standards might vary greatly. Certain individuals go all-in. Others adhere to the fundamentals, such as employing electronic signatures or acquiring only the essentials of data.

However, in recent years, many countries have enacted legislation with the goal of enforcing norms on how data is stored.

That’s right – having a structure in place makes it easy to guarantee you’re sticking to the principles rather than developing everything from scratch!

As a result, in nations such as the United States and the United Kingdom, any information held regarding an individual by an organisation must be kept in a specific manner.

This includes data collection, storage, and processing. It requires the data collecting entity to ensure that the data is truly needed for the stated purpose, and it demands that the data be safely discarded when it is no longer required.

How is Data Privacy critical for Marketers?

The digital world could become a marketing paradise without data privacy.

Prior to the internet, the prized possessions of customer details and aspirations were notoriously difficult to place in a marketer’s basket. It often meant having to commit to costly (and not always dependable) outreach in order to learn who clients were and what they desired.

And, given the arrival of the internet, it would have been much easier to obtain sensitive data about prospects if it weren’t for the data privacy rules placed in place to protect consumers’ information.

However, it is not only crucial for customers. Let’s take a look at a few of the aspects that influence data privacy for marketers.

What Exactly Is Marketing Compliance?

The process of making sure an organization’s marketing, promotional items, and sales activity adhere to the laws and policies set up to safeguard users and their personal information is known as marketing compliance.

Compliance responsibilities aim to preserve individuals’ privacy rights by requiring businesses to acquire, keep, and use data lawfully. Violations of these laws can result in substantial fines (those under GDPR, a maximum of €20 million or four percent of global turnover for the prior fiscal year, whichever is greater).

5 Digital Marketing Compliance & Privacy Best Practises

1. Allow Users to choose how their information is used

The fundamental premise of marketing compliance rules is to provide consumers with transparency and control over how their data is handled.

However, businesses might have trouble with this requirement at the beginning since they may not have a system in place for handling client preferences when it involves data.

There are a few essential steps to take to address this:

Consolidate consent into forms. Give individuals the opportunity to opt-in or opt out of marketing when they create an account on a website or subscribe to an email newsletter, for example.

Make a Consent Management Platform (CMP) available. Cookies consent to gather on your website is supported by providers such as Usercentrics and Didomi.

Establish a preferred management centre. It’s a portal which enables users to directly give or withdraw consent to various uses of their personal information whenever they choose.

Unless you’ve integrated that consent data into a single profile, you’re going to have multiple versions of their consent stored in various data management systems (such as the email tool and your CMP), leaving you without a clear actual time record of what you are able to do with that individual’s data.

2. Invest in an All-In-One Solution

Consent Orchestration (not to be confused with Consent Management) is included as part of a CDP (customer data platform) marketing compliance software solution.

Because CDPs are capable of gathering data from numerous sources (such as your brand’s website, CRM, applications, and emails) and then resolving IDs to integrate it into one client view, they can pay benefits in marketing compliance.

The finest CDPs will perform an identical test for consent preferences, combining all of the numerous choices a customer makes across multiple platforms and then giving the advertiser the most current version of the truth.

It then matches these choices whenever a marketer generates segments from their information for use in campaigns, avoiding data from being used in locations in which it is not permitted.

3. Vet Your Utilisation of Third-Party Data

Most, if not all, marketers use third-party data in some capacity. This could be through the purchase of marketing lists from third parties or the use of anonymised audiences for targeting ads via a Data Management Platform (DMP). 

Because the marketing department does not have complete control or oversight over the data that they utilise, this field is rife with possible marketing compliance hazards. As a result, many third-party data providers have come under pressure from regulatory organisations in recent years for improper data gathering and usage practices.

This has had significant effects on consumer and advertiser trust and is one of the factors contributing to the deprecating of third-party cookies, which is scheduled to take effect in late 2023.

All of this means that, in a privacy-first world, any third-party data source employed must be thoroughly verified so that marketers do not wind up with legal issues such as privacy violations via proxy.

4. Examine How (And Why) You Use Your Data

Most data privacy legislation is based on three basic data management principles, which are essential for all marketers to understand:

• Permission to use data. In other words, how you acquire consent in a ‘freely provided, specific, informed, and unambiguous’ manner, which is reinforced by a ‘clear affirmative action’.
• Data Availability. Also referred to as the ‘right to be forgotten,’ it enables people to have outdated or incorrect personal data erased.
• Data Concentration. In other words, are your only gathering the data you require and using it for authorised purposes?

We will focus on the last object, ‘Data Focus,’ because it’s typically the most overlooked pillar in marketing compliance.

As a marketer, it forces you to consider if you really need all that data or whether your marketing can do just as well with less – in numerous respects, an organisation of your data practises that not only allows you to be more compliant but also more efficient.

5. Adopt A Marketing Compliance Plan

A marketing compliance strategy does not have to be sophisticated, but it is critical that every organisation has a set of principles that are clear and agreed upon.

This is where you should collaborate with your Data Protection Officer (DPO) to develop a marketing compliance process tailored to your company’s needs, but in the meanwhile, here are a few general rules to follow:

Interdepartmental collaboration

Other departments need them just as much as marketing does, therefore they should not be the only ones to have expertise in this area. Establishing corporate legal and regulatory standards that are applicable to everyone ensures uniformity so nothing falls through the cracks.

Record a procedure

It will be challenging to demonstrate compliance with all regulatory requirements without a written marketing compliance procedure. Manual checklists can be used initially, but eventually, this procedure should be computerised to make management easier and quicker as time goes on.

Check and update routinely

It’s not enough to “set and forget” about marketing compliance. Frequently new regulations are released, thus it’s critical to keep up with the most recent changes lest your business suffers consequences for an unintentional error.

Conclusion

Why is data privacy crucial, likewise? considering what it stands for in terms of potential and constraints. Requirements for data privacy may initially appear to be an expense for the marketer. However, the organisation discipline it fosters and the necessity to examine procedures can lead to changes throughout the business, not only in marketing.

Furthermore, the chance it creates for a fruitful conversation between a firm and its customers ought to inspire most marketers to behave in novel, creative manners.