GDPR has overshadowed my work these last weeks as I worked with clients to get them prepared and legal for the 25 May deadline.
It's all about the data
For some clients the upcoming change in the law has brought a massive reality check. The problem for me hasn’t been how to design and manage re-permission programmes; but rather how to bring together disparate sets of customer records.
If you are running a neat and tidy CRM that manages all customer and prospect interactions then life is easy. But I’m afraid that isn’t always the case. Customer records can be kept on all sorts of independent spreadsheets, handwritten notebooks, smartphones, private laptops... it can be an alarming picture for some, but a good prompt to sort things out.
Automate re-permission
With a good client in the automotive sector I was able to draw on records that had been kept and refined over several years for email marketing. Using marketing automation platform MessageFocus I set up a simple programme via email to ask all contacts to re-subscribe (GDPR demands this requirement) and reminding them of the benefits of continued email contact.
The process was in three stages, so three bites of the cherry, as it were, over a couple of weeks. Those people granting re-permission for email communications by clicking my call-to-action button were automatically added to a new List (GDRP approved) and immediately removed from the program.
Those that failed to click first time will be sent a second email, and a third and final one if there’s no response. All 90k+ records will be dealt with using this programme once the sequence is completed.
No doubt the final list of those granting re-permission will be modest—but it will be 100% pure. My task in the following months will be to build that list up under the new rules.
