Guide 4 Getting your ducks in a row What campaigns can you send?
In brief What s happening? The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is a new data protection regulation, bringing greater protection for consumers and giving them more control over how their personal information is collected, stored, shared and used. To ensure organisations comply with the regulations, the reforms will bring an easier complaints process and huge fines backed by stronger ICO enforcement. The changes see the introduction of; Consent for data use and marketing to be freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous and for consent to be collected and stored in a way which makes it quick and easy to demonstrate consent and provide Subject Access Requests A consumer s right to be forgotten, affecting the way you process and store data Strict enforcement with large fines for companies who fail to comply What do I need to do? Pay attention! It s really important that you take a close look at what s changing and think carefully about your practices, so you can identify where things may need to change. It s difficult for us to be specific about exactly what needs to change as every company collects data differently, and your needs will depend on your own practices. Your needs will also depend on the campaigns you send and how you communicate with your customers. That s why we ve created this guide, the 4th of our GDPR series, looking specifically at what needs to be in place in order for you send the very best email marketing campaigns. Catch up with anything you ve missed Now we re not trying to scare you, but this is a very serious topic. If you aren t prepared for what s to come, it s likely that some or all of the data you hold could become useless. Make sure you catch up on what s changing, by taking a read of the earlier guides in this series; Our Guide to What s Coming Data Collection & Consent Processing & Storing Data You can also stay up to date by following #GDPR on Twitter. We ve also taken a look at some scenarios of the most common email campaigns some of our clients send, to get you thinking about similar scenarios in your email marketing, and where changes may need to be made. www.communicatorcorp.com 2
In this guide What campaigns can you send? 4 Email marketing Your campaigns The three steps 4 Some scenarios 7 Scenario 1 - A free trial Scenario 2 - Purchase process Scenario 3 - Sales recovery What s next? 8 What s next in the series? 9 www.communicatorcorp.com 3
What campaigns can you send? Well, there s no simple way of answering that question. As they do now, the campaigns you send will depend entirely on what data you collect, the information you provide and what consent you ask for, after the changes come into play. Email marketing Like all of your other direct marketing, your email marketing activity will be heavily affected by the GDPR. Our aim is to ensure you can take steps now to make sure you can continue to send ROI-driving, intelligent email campaigns after the GDPR comes into force, achieving the same or even better results than you see now. In order to continue sending highly personalised emails there s a few things you need to take a look at, like the types of campaigns and how you can support them with the right data and the right consent. Your campaigns The GDPR will have an impact on the data you collect and how you use that data to power your emails. We have been given a two year period to phase in changes, so that when the GDPR is enforced across Europe you will be collecting only the minimum consumer data, explaining to your customers what you are doing and providing them with choices which keeps them in control of their information. To ensure you re only collecting what you need, you should firstly take a look at the campaigns you currently send, or the ones you know you want to be sending in the near future. Then, you can work out what data you need to collect and store to power those campaigns and what your strategy will be for customers who want to receive simple emails without the behavioural tracking and personalization. You can then work backwards, looking at your data collection strategy to apply changes where they re needed. And then after all of that, you need to think about how you collect consent. Specifically, how do you explain to your customers how you would use their data, the benefits of opting-in and what their options are? The three steps Working backwards will ensure you have everything in place to support the next stage in the process. To help you out, we ve broken the process down into three steps; 1. The campaigns you want to send 2. What data do you need? 3. Setting the foundations www.communicatorcorp.com 4
Step 1 The campaigns you want to send The campaigns you send, or want to send in the future, depend on your audience and the different stages of your lifecycle. Looking at these individual stages and setting objectives for each will help you to identify what campaign and what message will work at each point. Then, you can think about what data you might want to use in each individual campaign in order for it to be of the most possible value to your recipients. To increase your customer s data protection the GDPR brings a new requirement called Data Minimisation which means that the data you collect, store and use must be limited to the strict minimum. For example, to send birthday emails, instead of the date of birth which is often a key piece of information if there is a data breach, tell your customers that you have a month s worth of special birthday offers if they tell you their age range and the month of their birthday. What s important to note here is that your campaigns can still be just as targeted, highly personalised and effective as they are now you just have to be clever about the way you gather data and specific about the consent you ask for. Depending upon the different campaigns you send, you can arrange them by how personalised they are, i.e. how much of a consumer s data they use. What you need to think about setting up are different streams individual mailing lists separated by the information you use to power each one and the campaigns attached to it. This means you can separate your subscribers by the types of campaigns they want to receive based on the information they re willing to provide and let you use. For example, give your subscribers the choice. Let them subscribe to a personalised stream of communications and a non-personalised stream, then under each stream you can analyse which data you re able to collect for each. www.communicatorcorp.com 5
Step 2 What data do you need? To determine this, firstly look at the minimum information you need for segmentation or for personalized or and dynamic content within your emails. Then you know what data you need to collect and store. Collecting consumer data also involves collecting consent. By looking at the streams you ve identified in step 1, you can use 2 or 3 checkboxes to collect opted-in consent, outlining the types of campaigns you ll be sending. Remember that when it comes to collecting data, the key is to only collect the minimum for what you will need. Collecting any more than just what s necessary or reasonable could land you in hot water. Step 3 Setting the foundations Laying the right foundations is at the heart of your email marketing activity, ensuring you have everything in place to send the campaigns you want to send, to those who ve given you permission and the data relevant to do so. In order to continue sending highly personalised, dynamic and targeted email campaigns you need to ensure you lay the right foundations when it comes to what data you collect and the consent you have. That way, you know you need to ensure you have clear, opted-in consent. That means collecting the right permissions for the types of campaigns you ll use in your email marketing strategy. Our guide to data collection & consent and our guide to processing and storing data will help with these stages. www.communicatorcorp.com 6
Some scenarios It s impossible for us to cover all of the bases when it comes to different email campaigns, as all of our clients are different and we never see the exact same campaign twice! get you thinking about where you might need to do something differently or take a different path in your practices, in order to still get the same outcome as you do now. With that in mind, we ve come up with a few scenarios which depict some of the more common email campaigns we see. They ve been designed to Scenario 1 - A free trial Now Free trial comms trial end (notified) further comms. After the changes Free trial comms further renewal and upsell comms as part of the servicing. Notify of coming end date and push for renewal end a) no further comms if the renewal wasn t taken up or b) further comms fine if taken up and opted in. Currently you would continue your emails after the trial has ended to try and get the customer to purchase. After the GDPR takes effect, you have to sell your product during the service message period. You can put up to 20% marketing in service messages, so make sure you have service messages to send. You should also use this period to show them what they would get if they signed-up for your emails if they haven t already. Scenario 2 - purchase process Now Email given at point of purchase purchase made comms start and continue until unsubscribe. After the changes Email given at point of purchase explain that email is for communications about the purchase additional options given to opt-in for either personalised or non-personalised comms comms start, depending on the type of permission you have as to which range of comms they get. They continue, with periodic consent collected at relevant stages, or until an unsubscribe occurs. If specific marketing permission is not collected, no marketing comms are sent and data is removed or anonymized after the information is no longer needed to support that purchase. www.communicatorcorp.com 7
Scenario 3 - sales recovery Now Email address previously captured for marketing/ newsletters customer browsing website item added to basket abandoned sales recovery emails sent to recover sale OR Customer browsing website item added to basket email captured as part of purchase process abandoned sales recovery emails sent to recover sale After the changes Email address previously captured for marketing/ newsletters customer browsing website item added to basket abandoned sales recovery emails sent to recover sale OR Customer browsing website item added to basket - Email address captured as part of the purchase process. At this stage it would be best to mention that emails will be sent regarding the purchase, but this is almost certainly implied by the context. (Ideally, specific marketing permission should be collected at this point) sales recovery emails sent to recover sale What s next? This guide is just one part of a series of publications we have available on the GDPR. In order to stay up to date with the most recent guides & blogs, visit the Communicator website resources section & blog. If you have any specific questions or you d like to sit down and discuss requirements, please get in touch with your Communicator Account Manager or a member of the team, below: You can also stay up to date with the conversation around the coming changes on social media, by following #EUDP. www.communicatorcorp.com 8
Our Privacy & Compliance series Guide 1 What s coming and what it means for you Guide 2 Can I have your number? Data collection & consent Guide 3 Ticking all the boxes? Processing & storing data Guide 4 Getting your ducks in a row What campaigns can you send? Guide 5 Say what?! Translating the changes to your customers Guide 6 Is it me you re looking for? The right to be forgotten Guide 7 Privacy notices Guide 8 Legitimate Interests Guide 9 Third Party Data in Email Marketing www.communicatorcorp.com 9
Any questions? For more help and advice like this and to access our library of free resources, visit the Communicator blog and resources sections at www.communicatorcorp.com @CommCorp +44 (0) 345 300 2337 info@communicatorcorp.com Experts in Email Performance