A Big, Crazy, Meltdown-Inducing GDPR Nurture Campaign
A Big, Crazy, Meltdown-Inducing GDPR Nurture Campaign
Yeah, this big image is *part* of the nurture campaign I have put together in HubSpot to manage how GDPR works in one of our nurture campaigns. Scary…
While you may initially look at that workflow and think “yeah but, mine’s bigger than yours” (no innuendos please); and you could be right – the problem that I am facing right now with this particular workflow is that it’s ONLY there to serve GDPR purposes (And in-case you don’t know – what is GDPR?).
IF it was just a normal workflow for a nurture campaign that didn’t need to pay such close attention to the General Data Protection Regulation; more affectionately referred to as GDPR; then it would look something a little bit like this:
Fills out form > Receives email > wait 5 days > receives email > wait 5 days > etc
As you can see; very linear, very straight forward, very non-consent-caring.
And that’s the main thing with GDPR – when it comes into force the most important aspect is the consent that you now need to gain in order to send content out to people. This is the main reason why that simple linear nurture campaign has increased in magnitude to the absolute meltdown-inducing one you see in the image before you. Meltdown doesn’t even begin to cover my feelings when GDPR was first announced, though.. this was me:
Not even joking; marketing life as we knew it was about to come crashing down before me, no more unsolicited emails, no more cold calling and will somebody please think about the PPI companies?!?!
After I had had a nice cup of tea and calmed down, I actually realised a few things. First of all it was that I actually didn’t care about the PPI companies and as well as that; I didn’t do any unsolicited emailing or cold calling. Or anything that wouldn’t actually be improved by the GDPR come to think of it.
And that got me thinking… GDPR is actually a big opportunity to improve the quality of our marketing efforts because we will be reaching people who have actively consented to receiving our communications. A lot of people have said to me things like “but what about all of those thousands of people that we know won’t opt in? We will never be able to send them emails or call them again!” – Good! So you’re basically telling me that you were sending thousands of emails to people that you knew weren’t engaged in the first place? Smells like bad practice to me.
As businesses we should love GDPR in the same way that ad companies love Ad Blockers. If you have an Ad Blocker installed then you quite obviously hate ads and are never likely to click on one anyway. Great for the Ad company – CPC has gone down, CTR has gone up, bounce rate has gone down and quality of traffic has increased through a higher number of conversions. It’s the same for filtering out those that are completely uninterested in hearing about what you’ve got to say.
This also begs the question; why are they uninterested in what you have to say? What can you do moving forward in order to be more engaging in your communications?
The important thing about GDPR is that it is a perfect opportunity to review the way things are currently being done and do something about it.
How GDPR is helping us as a marketing and design agency
When looking into this (GDPR Manchester specifically) there are a great deal of events and workshops and talks and seminars and webinars and etc etc etc all out there to help all businesses, not just marketing and design agencies in Manchester.
As an industry it is important that we come together in this way to help each other understand what needs to be done moving forward. When we hit May 2018, is all of your data cleansed? Do you have the systems/protocols in place to deal with new contacts coming into your business whether that be a prospective lead or a contractor that you are doing business with?
From a couple of the meetings that I have attended I have noticed that there is a large disparity in knowledge around what businesses actually need to be doing for GDPR. There seems to be a great confusion around what levels of consent need to be gained, how businesses need to be storing data and when data needs to be deleted.
Some people still believe that a single checkbox to consent into all marketing communications will be alright and just think that it is a case of changing from an opt-out system to an opt-in; wash their hands about the whole thing and forget about it.
Others that I have spoken to have also expressed their thoughts that they don’t even think GDPR is that big a deal because they don’t think the regulator will keep on top of it.
The most important peice of advice that I have is to prepare as early as possible and to ensure that you are complying with GDPR for your own sake, not just for the sake of satisfying legal requirements (although that is important, obviously…).
At Project Simply we aren’t ensuring ours and our clients’ compliance just for the sake of not getting in trouble with the law; we are doing so because we believe that everyone has the right to have their data protected properly. These new laws, while quite strict and time-consuming to implement; are there for the purpose of protecting our data. The reason that the fines and penalties are there are to eliminate possibilities of companies that pose a weak-link in protecting our data.
Want to know more about how we can help? Get in touch with us now and let’s chat.
