Five marketing experts advise resellers in the era of GDPR

Inboxes around Europe were overflowing in the run-up to 25 May - the date GDPR came into force. These desperate emails were sent to try to ensure that the data handlers wouldn't fall foul of the EU-wide regulation, which incurs a four per cent fine for those organisations that don't follow the rules.

We asked five marketing experts to offer advice on how channel companies can generate new leads and rethink their marketing strategies, while remaining within the bounds of GDPR.

Alisha Dattani, CEO and co-founder, FXMA

Do you think the new regulation will cause resellers to go back to the drawing board regarding their marketing tactics? If you look at email marketing, resellers can no longer buy lists or depend on vendor data or distribution data to send emails and go about lead generation in the way they may have before. This is about going back to basics and setting out a marketing strategy from here on.

In terms of strategy, it's really important for them to build their own brand and stand out for the right reasons. We always say to our clients that transparency is everything…You have to explain to your client base how their data is going to be used. Explain to your prospects why you're collecting that data and build up more trust with the clients with which you are communicating.
Will we see an increase in using new media, such as social media, and old tactics, such as direct marketing? We as an agency have been running a lot of direct mail campaigns this year on behalf of our clients; coming up with a fully integrated marketing campaign and working with our clients in terms of who is their target prospect, what messages should we take out there and even going so far as handwritten letters or really interesting giveaways via post - whatever drives the customer to a journey. That has definitely had a lot of traction and been very effective.

What advice would you give resellers to ensure they remain GDPR compliant? Be transparent; it creates trust. I don't believe in shady tactics to gather opt-ins, such as tricking customers into filling in forms or pre-ticked email opt-ins. Look at your brand, understand what your customer is looking for, create compelling content and establish credibility. When you are gathering your opt-ins, make sure you have genuine interest from your customers and that they want to be marketed to.Do you think the ICO will treat a B2B company that breaks the GDPR rules the same as a B2C company, considering the latter has a wider scope if data is breached? I think B2C and B2B are blurring and I think it's blurring because a lot of customers are using their personal emails to be marketed to. It's very difficult to work out whether you're talking to a consumer or a business on the other end, especially when you're gathering in bound. Therefore I think we need to be just as conscious as the B2C market in B2B marketing.

Highlights

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James Foulkes, co-founder and director, Kingpin Communications

Do you think the new regulation will cause resellers to go back to the drawing board regarding their marketing tactics? Anything resellers did before GDPR, they should pretty much be able to continue post-GDPR. The Data Protection Act 1998 had eight things that you had to be compliant with; the GDPR has six. So it's not like companies weren't under these terms and conditions before, it's just that they chose to ignore them because there wasn't a four per cent fine.

Resellers are often very revenue-driven so they've just done a lot of mass-market stuff at the lowest cost. It's probably going to make them think of marketing not as a commodity, but as an investment that they need to get return on. So that will herald better ways and smarter spending of money. Maybe it will make them more creative, but it will make them focus on what marketing can deliver them as revenue.

Will we see an increase in using new media, such as social media, and old tactics, such as direct marketing?
I think we will see an increase. With Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter that data is already opted in and in the public domain. We have already seen a shift towards snail mail and highly targeted direct marketing anyway, and that's because companies are shifting down the number of companies they need to speak to. They need to stand out and you can't do that through an email. We were already seeing that shift, and GDPR will accelerate it.

What advice would you give resellers to ensure they remain GDPR compliant?
Don't look at the main mass media, look at the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) website and it will tell you what it considers legitimate interests. It also has forms you can fill in which tell you how GDPR-ready you are.

Make sure when you are doing a marketing campaign - and that can be anything from telephone to email outreach - that you do a data protection impact assessment, work out where that data came from, and the effects if the data is breached. Make sure your privacy policy is up to date and regularly communicate it to anyone on your database. Try to get consent wherever you can.

Don't take datasets off salespeople's laptops that they have accrued over time; build datasets off public domains such as LinkedIn. If you're buying third-party data, make sure you know how they managed to opt in and managed that process. Think about marketing like any kind of legal contract.

Do you think the ICO will treat a B2B company that breaks the GDPR the same as a B2C company, considering the latter has a wider scope if data is breached? I think it would look at the actual organisation and the state of the data breach. If you look at its terms and conditions, it will analyse every single complaint and data breach that comes to them.

It depends on the activity. Do I think the ICO looks at B2C and B2B differently? Only in that B2C contains more information such as credit card details because it's more transactional. It will be about what the data is and what the breach is, rather than if it's B2C or B2B.

Highlights

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Phil Brown, managing director, OneGTM

Do you think the new regulation will cause resellers to go back to the drawing board regarding their marketing tactics? I think in a lot of respects, GDPR reinforces what many companies were doing as best practice anyway. If companies were previously following best practice in relation to certain aspects of marketing then GDPR might not entail significant changes for them. It does reinforce the importance of some of that best practice, particularly in terms of thinking about how they make sure that they are delivering value to the people they are communicating with.

GDPR reduces the temptation to indiscriminately blast out emails in the hope that something sticks in an untalented, scattergun fashion - that approach won't fly under GDPR. It increases the importance of resellers thinking about how they can make sure they are always delivering value in how they communicate so that people actually want to continue to hear and engage with them.Will we see an increase in using new media, such as social media, and old tactics, such as direct marketing? I think there are a range of tactics which can still be valid. It's what you're saying which is the most important thing. Are you offering people things that are of interest and value to them, as opposed to blasting them with product-led messages? Whether you're doing that via putting out content on social media, or using AdWords to drive people to interesting content that you're publishing, or sending emails to an opt-in database, ultimately the key is if you have something of value to say to make people want to hear from you.What advice would you give resellers to ensure they remain GDPR compliant? You need to have good processes in place for managing and tracking data, tracking opt-ins and making sure you have the processes in place if people want to opt out. I think it has implications in terms of sharing data, which at times might have implications in terms of working with vendors and distributors. And have good governance and processes in place to make sure you are compliant.

Highlights

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Glenn Robertson, owner and MD, purechannels

Do you think the new regulation will cause resellers to go back to the drawing board regarding their marketing tactics? I think we've yet to see the fallout of the effects of GDPR because it's too close to the enforcement date. My gut says it's going to be alright. Get your policies in place, you're covered and squeaky clean in everything you do and everything you do can be attributed to compliancy within GDPR.

It wasn't put in place to kill marketing. If you drill down to the document, things such as email marketing aren't referred to specifically all that much so I don't think it was set to kill B2B marketing - it gives us an opportunity to be better at what we do.Will we see an increase in using new media, such as social media, and old tactics, such as direct marketing? A lot of channel marketing is successful when it's simple and when it does exactly what is required - not because it's cool, new or trendy - but because there's a need to communicate with people. That is what we have found has massive success all the time.

I think the return to direct marketing is a likely one and it should be. I think it does present a really big opportunity to enable marketers to be a bit smarter and think about the options available.
Social media is a wonderful way of reaching wide and targeted audiences. I think the jury's still out in terms of the absolute success that you can have with an independent social media approach. I think, especially in the channel, social works better as a partner-co-ordinated approach where you have a number of different activities going on at the same time.
What advice would you give resellers to ensure they remain GDPR compliant? Take a look at the data you've already got. You will already have valuable, useable data that you are allowed to use as it's either been opted into or become part of legitimate interests. As long as you've got compliant policy to back it up, it should be no problem.

The other thing to remember is that if you are using data that you are allowed to use, then chances are you're going to get better ROI out of it. Your stats are likely to increase because the people you're communicating with have asked for it. So organically your levels of interactions and ROI on those are going to go up because you're thinking smarter on how to work with the data you have.

If people are genuinely struggling with data, it's still OK to buy data from a data house. The likes of IT Europa are data houses and they are good sources of it. They've not just gone out of business overnight and GDPR hasn't stopped them supplying data. However they've done it they've remained GDPR-compliant and that data still exists to be purchased.

Highlights

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Olivier Choron, UK general manager Impartner Software

Do you think the new regulation will cause resellers to go back to the drawing board regarding their marketing tactics? The vast majority of channel partners are smaller entities and so the challenge for them is that they have very little time, resources or money to address this GDPR challenge. That means they need all the help they can get.

In the early days of the internet, vendors had to educate their partners in how the internet was going to change their business. So there's a role for vendors to continue that role of education and to provide best practices to help those channel partners, because it's in the supplier's interests too. I think it is important that they continue to do that when it comes to GDPR.
Will we see an increase in using new media, such as social media, and old tactics, such as direct marketing? I don't think we've touched the top of the iceberg when it comes to social selling and advertising. I think channel partners should do a lot more. Direct marketing campaigns have always been working; targeted and managed and cost-effective campaigns work extremely well. Maybe there will be a more pronounced return to those campaigns.

However, we do have to be conscious of the fact that channel partners have limited marketing budgets and resources and know-how, so doing direct mailing is great but expensive. Doing social is great but time and resources needs to be spent on that. It's not as simple as getting a list and sending emails out.What advice would you give resellers to ensure they remain GDPR complaint? They have to understand what the issues and challenges posed by GDPR are, so they have to get advice and there are plenty of companies out there willing to provide that advice. I think they need to venture beyond emailing and look at social, which they might not have looked at previously because they didn't have to, but I think they have to look at it right now because it is an easier marketing option for them than others.

One thing that channel partners do is go to or organise local events such as shows and conferences. They need to make sure that they maybe have forms that each contact visiting their booth can complete which clearly highlights that they are giving the right to be contacted. These small changes need to happen everywhere so that partners can go through the process correctly.

Highlights

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How will GDPR force resellers to rethink marketing? Five experts have their say

CRN asked leading marketers to weigh in on how resellers can navigate their business through the new GDPR landscape

How will GDPR force resellers to rethink marketing? Five experts have their say

CRN asked leading marketers to weigh in on how resellers can navigate their business through the new GDPR landscape

How will GDPR force resellers to rethink marketing? Five experts have their say

CRN asked leading marketers to weigh in on how resellers can navigate their business through the new GDPR landscape

How will GDPR force resellers to rethink marketing? Five experts have their say

CRN asked leading marketers to weigh in on how resellers can navigate their business through the new GDPR landscape

How will GDPR force resellers to rethink marketing? Five experts have their say

CRN asked leading marketers to weigh in on how resellers can navigate their business through the new GDPR landscape