You may have seen it on LinkedIn, blogs, or in a newsletter: the CNIL is becoming stricter and starting to hand out fines like hotcakes to companies that do not comply with the GDPR (we can think of Nestor, who was fined 20,000 euros for commercial prospecting without people’s consent).
So, how can you integrate these constraints (which we are pleased to have as end-users) into a communication and inbound marketing strategy whose objective is, among other things, to nurture a pool of prospects through a content strategy (emailing, webinars, whitepapers, etc.)?
Map out your inbound marketing strategy.
When you’re headed down, whether you’re a CEO, freelancer, marketing team, or intern, it’s essential to take a step back and look at your overall marketing actions. Here, we’ll only talk about inbound marketing.
List your marketing communication channels.
I can’t stress enough the importance of listing all the distribution channels you use:
- Blog
- Newsletter.
You already have a map of your traffic sources or prospects from there.
List your entry points: where users enter their data
In an inbound marketing strategy, remember that the goal is not to write content just for the sake of it. An inbound marketing strategy must serve the company’s commercial objectives: generating leads, sales, and contacts through content that reflects your expertise.
Therefore, ensuring that as many visitors as possible contact you is essential. And this can be done through several levers:
- contact form;
- phone call;
- whitepaper download via a form;
- chat;
- purchase/request for a quote.
And that’s precisely where you need to seriously consider the data management and consent of your users, as this information must be present in your register of processing activities. The multitude of tools (chat, form, website hosting, etc.) makes it difficult to control your flow completely. Therefore, evaluating them carefully and considering how to centralize them is essential.
A reminder of GDPR requirements applicable to your website
It is essential to provide a brief reminder of the measures and sections that must be implemented on a website:
- Legal notices;
- Mandatory information under data collection forms;
- Cookie banner/consent management platform;
- Cookie Policy;
- Privacy policy.
These obligations are the starting point for a peaceful relationship with the CNIL.
Consent: Marketing obstacle or opportunity?
Managing visitor data and consent to comply with GDPR can be pretty restrictive.
Appointing a DPO, reviewing your forms and other data collection points, and updating your site to offer secure navigation can be difficult.
But no, GDPR is not an obstacle.
Don’t see GDPR as an obstacle. Firstly, as users, we are all pleased to know that regulation is starting to regulate and protect us by giving us control over our data, whether it is the ability to choose our cookies or the right to access our data (although we are still waiting for something to be done about call centers that want to sell us new phone plans every four minutes…).
But let’s face it: all of this is going in the right direction!
What opportunities are there between GDPR and inbound marketing?
The management of this regulation from a marketing director’s point of view is different. You can rely on an inbound marketing agency that sees it as an opportunity in several ways:
Consent Management: an indicator of Professionalism and Credibility
Let’s take two websites that offer the same thing: downloading a white paper on commercial prospecting.
Site A displays a consent form. The user receives the white paper and a series of emails on commercial prospecting. This is great because we address the topic that interests them and handle their data correctly.
Site B displays a classic contact form. The user receives weekly emails they did not ask for and on topics that do not interest them.
Users are increasingly concerned about the protection of their data. They will have a much better image of site A than site B. And if they have to place an order, they will go through site A.
Quality of content
Communicators must redouble their efforts to obtain the consent of their users. Is it such a significant constraint? Let’s be clear: as users are less and less willing to give away their data, companies are interested in offering high-quality content. Activation content (white paper type) or animation content (newsletter type): if your content is qualitative, there is no reason why users will unsubscribe and not convert at some point.
Animation of your database
And we come to the last opportunity represented by consent management in an inbound marketing strategy: the animation of your database.
It is a reasonably technical point that can be difficult to implement but is widely necessary. We see two prominent cases:
- Companies that do not use a CRM or marketing automation tool like SendInBlue;
- Companies that already have a CRM in place to animate their database.
In both cases, you must better architect your lists/attributes to manage users’ consent and data. Let’s take the example of a user who wants to learn more about SEO in 2021. They arrive on a site that offers them an SEO guide 2021: download via a consent form.
From there, the user should enter a specific list on a CRM or email tool and can receive any other content related to SEO or Google ranking.
This is where GDPR is an opportunity in inbound marketing: it also allows you to verticalize your communications and intelligently animate your database to optimize your KPIs:
- open and click-through rates on your emails and newsletters;
- reading time on your blog;
- number of downloads of your white papers;
- overall conversion rate.
Conclusion
If you still have questions about consent management and, more generally, about the impact of GDPR on your inbound marketing strategy, see it as an opportunity to boost the performance of your marketing actions!
Benjamin Hertaux, Kick Digital, wrote the article.
