Brands Should See GDPR as an Opportunity, Report Indicates

According to data from the CMO Council and SAP Customer Experience, brands that prepared to meet GDPR data standards, which went into effect on May 25th, noted increased trust and engagement levels with customers. Respondents to the CMO-SAP survey agreed that the implementation of GDPR standards reinforced brands’ responsibility to protect customer data, but more successful organizations seized this responsibility to create optimized experiences.
 
Alternatively, brands that did not develop a plan to comply with GDPR either saw the process of compliance as a burden that other organizations would solve or as an issue only EU-based companies would need to tackle.
 
“What marketing leaders have seized upon is the reality that trust is the currency of today's data-driven customer engagement,” says Liz Miller, Senior Vice President of Marketing with the CMO Council. “Without trust, the customer will walk away from an experience, taking their loyalty and their wallets with them. GDPR, and more specifically the frenzy of activity surrounding the compliance deadline of May 24, 2018, was not the end of a security conversation…it was the start of an experience transformation."
 
The CMO-SAP survey, the results of which are published in the white paper “GDPR: Impact and Opportunity—How Marketing Leaders Addressed GDPR Readiness and Compliance,” asked questions of about 227 senior marketing executives and was taken at the height of the GDPR planning process. The white paper establishes best practices adopted by those who planned for GDPR and saw it as an opportunity. It also compares those practices with attitudes adopted by those who did not plan. The white paper calls the former group “leaders” and the latter group “laggards.”
 
The report outlines several key differences between the two groups. Leaders saw GDPR as an opportunity to secure trust, loyalty, and experience, while laggards saw it as someone else’s problem. 39 percent of marketers without a GDPR strategy felt the regulation did not apply to their business.
 
In addition, leaders assessed their technology stacks to determine how to accelerate compliance procedures, with 55 percent initiating some form of data audit to understand where and how customer data was being stored and collected. 37 percent of leaders planned to upgrade capabilities across all data management solutions.
 
“Savvy businesses already understand that to win customer loyalty they must lead with transparency and consent,” says Patrick Salyer, General Manager of the SAP Customer Data Cloud at SAP Customer Experience. “In today’s landscape, companies are realizing that trust is the ultimate currency and it serves as the foundation of all meaningful customer relationships.”   
 
The white paper is now available for download by visiting https://cmocouncil.org/thought-leadership/reports/gdpr-impact-and-opportunity. It is based on the input from marketers across a broad range of industries including retail, financial services, consumer packaged goods, and consumer electronics and information technology. Some 40 percent of respondents hold a title of CMO, Head of Marketing, or SVP of Marketing at a North American organization.
 
 

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