We are on the cusp of a data revolution. It will impact how organisations collect, store and analyse their digital data. But there is strong resistance building.
Organisations have lost sight of the importance of consent, so individuals are becoming more aware of the use, and sometimes abuse, of their personal data. This has led to a sharp decline in trust between consumers and organisations.
Research from Orange found that, even back in 2014, 78% of consumers thought it is hard to trust companies when it came to use of their personal data. The World Economic Forum showed in their research that 67% of the general public think organisations, companies and agencies ask for too much personal information online.
Governments have wised up to this growing mistrust by introducing new regulations. The UK will be subject to the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) when it comes into force on the 25th May 2018.
But rather than let compliance drive decisions, digital marketers can lead from the front by forming new relationships with consumers. Relationships based on the consent of the individual, which will not only rebuild trust but form a deeper connection and engagement with their customers.
We have quite a long way to go. Research from The Chartered Institute of Marketing shows that 50% of marketers do not know that consumers have the right to stop their details being passed on for direct marketing. This right to be forgotten is one of the requirements of GDPR and is a positive move.
Boston Consulting Group found a small but consistently positive impact on the willingness to share data if this right to be forgotten was upheld. Unfortunately, just released research from Symantec shows that 90% of businesses think it’s too hard to delete customer data. This research also highlighted that 35% of businesses, by their own admission, don’t take an ethical approach to securing and protecting customer data.
The challenge is to enable organisations to store their data all in one place – what we term the single source of data truth – that can be synchronised across all departments and even partners. What’s required is a secure platform that sits outside of the company, protecting the organisation’s integrity, privacy and security.
But more than this, as per GDPR recommendations, the individual should be in control of their own data. They too should have access and the ability to set permissions about what data is held, how the information is being used and whether this is anonymised or not, plus who has access to it with the ability to provide explicit consent and have the right to be forgotten.
The opportunity is that this consent does not result in a ‘Do Not Mail’ blanket tag. Instead, marketers can give individuals options, where they can grant permission for one purpose and not for another. Through this insight into interests, organisations can present consumers with just the information they request and need, forming a value exchange to the benefit of all parties.
There is another opportunity. Engagement can come from an individual’s ability to record his or her own activities on a day-to-day basis. For example, it could be athletes or team members wanting to record their performance, or indeed coaches monitoring a whole team’s performance. It could be health organisations or charities wanting to help patients with an ability to record symptoms or triggers to monitor their own health conditions feeding into a care plan.
This is where engagement really comes into its own. With consent, individual data can be combined with big data sets and through machine learning, large amounts of data can be modelled to seek out patterns previously unknown. This allows organisations to obtain real insights from actual consented data, without making assumptions based on a small statistical sample. New opportunities are presented. New markets open up.
When data consent is placed at the heart of an organisation, these opportunities will reveal themselves and a real revolution will take place. A revolution where the individual, the organisation and society as a whole can benefit and where trust can be rebuilt.
By Keith Dewar, group development & marketing director at MyLife Digital
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