How to Market to your Audience in a GDPR World

It feels like ages ago that the UK went GDPR crazy back in May 2018, but as marketers have had to change tactics, learn new techniques and refresh their thoughts on how to market to their audience in a GDPR World, I've created a mini guide to help with this or at least get you thinking. You may have already considered or rolled out some of these tactics, but if not, it might be worth looking into it pronto:

Review Your Marketing Lists

One of the positive effects of GDPR is that it has allowed marketing lists to be reviewed, and those not interested in the products and services offered, be filtered out and removed. GDPR focused on ‘consent’ meaning if someone already signed up for your newsletter, then they gave you their consent to be contacted via newsletter or other marketing methods… as long as they also agreed to the ‘other methods’. If you’ve got their consent then you’re good to go and can consider them as ‘interested’ as they’ve already told you they are.

For those that haven’t provided consent, they should have already been removed by now allowing marketing lists to be reduced in size so only quality ‘interested’ people are included. This new list is like gold as it’s left those that have a higher chance of being a customer in their place and allowed your audience to specify the products they ARE interested in allowing you to serve them with material of benefit.

Greet Your Long Lost Customers With Open Arms

GDPR caused a flurry of emails (especially in May 2018) pulling up archaic data from years ago that your audience has likely forgotten they’ve provided, and in some instances, you’ve forgotten you had and likely not contacted or used for a while. Where your audience was being contacted again, fresh it could have caused them to check out your website again (which hopefully looks refreshed since they last saw it) to see who you are (as they’ve likely forgotten themselves too). Side note- if you've not updated your website in a while, you really should sort that out otherwise you could look stagnant! Don’t hide away when people view your website, make a point of it and create something special for these old/repeat customers e.g ‘20% off for previous customers to show them you care. So many times new customers get shiny new offers, but those current or old ones are forgotten about… and that’s when they start looking elsewhere.

Turn On Google Remarketing

For those that do come to your website, if you’ve got Google Adword Remarketing set up and turned on, they’ll be reminded of you even when they visit other web pages (it covers over 2 million websites and mobile apps in total) as an advert will ‘follow them around’. It’s easy to create an advert and set it up to specific and custom parameters and track the statistics of how it performs and tweak if necessary. This allows you to stay in your audiences head for up to 540 days later.

Update Your Privacy Policies And T&C's

I get that GDPR likely caused change for many organisations BUT I believe this change should be embraced. For those that didn’t already have them, Privacy Policies and Terms and Conditions have needed to be created or updated but they don’t need to be completely dull and hard of facts. Some companies have shown a lighter more human side and hidden ‘extras’ within their policies allowing a personality to shine through that audiences react positively too.

Consider User Generated Content (UGC)

Following on from this new ‘human,’ personal and approachable touch, marketers can consider the phrase ‘humans buy from humans’... it’s why UGC works so well and why content created by your consumers and fans drives higher engagement, reaches further and converts more than manufactured marketing. Companies should use this to their advantage and show their audience they’re human too and understand the importance of data and that they appreciate the trust their audience gives them by handing over their data.

Give Something Extra With Those Receipts

For those that do make a purchase and become a customer, you’ll likely give them a receipt of what was purchased. However, you can also include a little something extra such as a voucher code for their next purchase. If you entice them with something extra, that receipt has a higher percentage chance of being kept and saved for another day vs it being thrown away and forgotten. When they keep the receipt, they’re keeping you in their mind giving you another chance to market to them. 

Signpost Your 'Right To Be Forgotten' Process

As a marketer, you don’t want to frustrate your audience as an annoyed customer will not just stop buying your products, but they may discourage others from doing so. If your audience wants to stop receiving your content, you’ll need to ensure there’s an easy way for them to do this. Within your T&C’s or Privacy Policy, you’ll need a way for them to request their ‘right to be forgotten’.

Allow People To Unsubscribe Within Emails

I've lost count the amount of times I've had an email I've really not cared about and tried to unsubscribe from, only to find no button to easily do so... it's frustrating! People need to be able to easily unsubscribe from your emails, after all, it's required by law. By adding an automatic ‘unsubscribe’ action button on the bottom of all your emails, if your email CRM is set up correctly, it will transfer this update across all of your databases so you don’t need to even lift a finger.

Tell Them You'll Miss Them

When people do unsubscribe (and it does happen, no matter how hard you try), don't react negatively or ignore them, create a personal ‘sorry to see you go’ email that's genuine and thoughtful. These emails don’t have to be mundane you can still inject some more personality into them as you never know, they might one day come back so don't burn your bridges.

Investigate The Unsubscribe

When people unsubscribe, there's many reasons why (and not all of them related to you), but you should always try to work out what prompted it so you can make it better for others. For example, if they tag it as spam, it means others might do the same, and if that happens, you'll get flagged as ‘spam’ too many times, and will automatically go to the spam box rather than an inbox

So there you have it, a few ideas how as marketers, you can use the data you do have to maximise its potential and keep your audience engaged and happy in a GDPR World. Hopefully it's helped or prompted a few thoughts.

Have a lovely day!