GDPR one year on – what has it meant for email marketing?

One year ago, we were all frantically “re-permissioning” our own email lists and receiving hundreds of mails asking us to confirm our consent to hear from the companies we shop with.  12 months on, I thought I’d take a look on the impact of the General Data Protection Regulations, from the marketer’s perspective and how it has influenced our relationship with the consumers we communicate with.

What did GDPR mean for marketers?

Perhaps the greatest impact of GDPR from a marketing perspective, was that most businesses had to severely cut down the number of people on their email lists.  If we could not prove that someone on our list had actively consented to be on it, or somehow that being on the list was in their “legitimate interest”, we had to remove them.  This led to many companies sending out “re-permissioning” emails to gain that explicit consent. Many found that very few of their original list signed up again.  Even well-trusted brands suffered.  The Economist magazine lost 80% of its email list due to recipients’ failure to re-consent. Marketers initially predicted doom and gloom. In fact, surveys taken this year show that email is still very much alive as a marketing platform.

How have consumer views changed since GDPR came in?

A report from Smart Insights shows that 59% of consumers still prefer to hear from brands via email, before and after they buy,  and that email remains the “digital passport” across the wide range of marketing channels.  Even for Customer Service, 48% of customers still prefer to use email over phone, text or social media messaging.

Further research indicates that more of us are now confident that, if a company has our email address, it is because we have given it to them. A report by the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) shows that 41% of consumers think GDPR has improved how companies use their data.  (CIM, November 2018). This in turn makes us less suspicious of marketing communications that come in via email. In addition, customers are starting to see the benefit of providing data. 31% now say they are happy to provide data, if it means the messages they receive from a brand are more personalised and likely to be relevant. This trust is highest amongst younger consumers. There is of course a flipside to this. If you are collecting data and NOT personalising your marketing, you do risk alienating the people you contact.  Another interesting fact is that these personalised messages do not need to include discounts and freebies.  What consumers really care about is that the communications they receive should be useful and relevant to them.

What has been the impact of GDPR for businesses?  

There is no doubt that GDPR was costly for businesses, however small.  Time, marketing support, privacy consultancy, updating technology and running advertising campaigns to rebuild email lists, quickly built up into a substantial investment.

The good news is that most businesses report that getting it right has not had a major impact on actual trade.  Despite losing so much of its email list, The Economist only had 3% fewer subscriptions in the months following GDPR.

Businesses have had to make more effort to segment and personalise their email communications, and this has led to more sales stemming from fewer emails, and improved email sign-up rates.

Many have also widened their marketing activity to make the most of social media, paid advertising and other channels, which, in many cases, have been more successful for them than the untargeted mass emails they sent before.

Despite the initial doom and gloom, according to a survey by the DMA reported in Marketing Week, more than half of marketers feel positive about the impact GDPR has had on their email campaigns and 91% still consider email an important channel.   The results support this.  74% of marketers report an improvement in email open rates in the past year and 75% have seen an increase in click-through rates from emails.  There has also been a big reduction in the proportion of email recipients unsubscribing or reporting mails as spam.

What’s next for data protection?

GDPR, alongside other news stories around privacy such as the Cambridge Analytica scandal, has clearly moved us all into a new phase of how we interact with our customers, and how we expect businesses to interact with us as a consumer. Customers are far more clued up on how much data businesses have, and should have, about them and expect their messages to be tailored in response.  Whilst this means that marketers need to work smarter, making sure our emails are well targeted, relevant and useful, it also means our activities are more likely to drive conversions.

So, put simply, carry on respecting GDPR, and making good use of the data your customers have given you, and you are in a very good position to also be running effective marketing campaigns using it.

What about the e privacy regulation changes?

One more thing, and yes it could be a biggie for marketers.  Originally scheduled for 2019, it now looks as if changes to the European e-privacy regulations could be ready in summer 2020.  This will replace the current PECR (Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations) and is likely to have a big impact on how consumers opt-in to other data collection tools, such as cookies, location data and similar tracking technologies. It may also have implications for how communications tools such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Skype guarantee confidentiality.   This could well change how we work with tools such as Facebook’s “lookalike” audiences and Google Remarketing ads – but the exact impact is still unclear.  Maybe, as with GDPR, consumers will accept that data sharing is a positive route to receiving more relevant and interesting marketing content, a win-win for both sides.

Watch this space for more information as soon as it becomes available.