By now you have become intimately acquainted with your clients and / or your own companies GDPR obligations and have spent an unprecedented and unwelcome amount of time attempting to comply with a complex, subjective and shifting piece of legislation.
With the final flurry of GDPR deadline emails imploring you to opt in, opt out, or simply do nothing, you must be as amazed as I am, at how many mailing lists you belong to. Mailing lists you never subscribed to, or have the faintest interest in. Which goes to prove that the last decade or so’s obsession with the Holy Grail of data-centric marketing has been largely (if not entirely) as most obsessions are, a frantic waste of time.
Less than 5% of most marketing databases are active – ie the recipients of the emails actually know who is mailing them and are interested in what they have to say. The other 95% just hit delete if they make it past the junk filter, and yet they keep coming.
GDPR could, and I stress could, be the saviour of properly engaging direct marketing activity for those marketers who are brave enough to allow their precious, though largely impotent, mailing lists and databases to wither away and actually focus their attention on the few who are interested, work out why, then find more of the same.
Start with the brand, what it means to people and why those who love you, love you. Revisit what you are all about and amplify those messages.
Be brave and switch budget out of data and into channels which engage audiences in places where they are making decisions about the type of things you sell.
Stop being part of the tidal wave of unwanted digital messaging and actively ask customers what they want and if they do want to ‘join your club’ sure, welcome them in, sit them down and make them comfortable.
We’re all different, we’re all individuals so there is no off-the-shelf solution in this Brave New World, but if you’d welcome a grown up conversation about how your marketing strategy could thrive post GDPR then please get in touch.
Gus@guerilla-creative.co.uk – 01628819007