Rules, Regulations, and Requirements Make You a Better Marketer

Government Regulations, privacy, and opt-in requirements have impacted the marketer’s ability to effectively communicate to customers and more so, to prospects.

Two legal issues that you need to understand and integrate into your customer communications are privacy laws and anti-spam laws. In general:

• Privacy laws are country specific and determine how you collect, store, and protect your customer’s information.
• Anti-spam laws, for most countries, define how you offer your customers the ability to opt-in.

My question to you is, are these legal issues hinderances or advantages?

Many marketers begin their omnichannel marketing communications with email triggers and see these regulations as problems. I see opportunity.

Let’s look at four areas that are impacted and discuss pros and cons of these requirements to help you define a deployable strategy.

1. Increased Workload

Con – Setting up and tracking individual customer data creates a lot more work for marketing.

Pro – More than ever, marketers need to evaluate every interaction with these valued and often expensive contacts. These standards make us better marketers. We need to clearly think through what we are selling, to whom, and for what reason. We need to demonstrate how our offering resolves their specific problem or need.

2. Smaller Contact List

Con – The laws potentially reduce the number of people that my company can contact.

Pro – Wouldn’t we all prefer to discuss our product with a smaller, engaged audience? The discussion becomes more efficient for both sales and marketing potentially reducing your sales cycle since the contact is interested in your service. And by providing the sales team truly qualified leads, they become confident in the leads that marketing is providing. And the fact that the leads are interested improves the sales engagement, possibly reducing the sales cycle. Which leads to better sales conversion.

3. Build Relationships Faster

Con – My current communication strategy assumes a prospect learning curve.

Pro – With this smaller audience that opted-in you begin the relationship with a less formal engagement. These customers are looking for a solution. These customers found you. They are interested in your offering. And they agree to receive your communications.

It’s now up to you to build the connection, trust, interest, purchase, and eventual customer satisfaction.

4. Build a Data-Driven Contact Base

Con – OK, I don’t see a con.

Pro – Imagine having the ability to develop an effective omni-channel customer engagement, communicating to your customers in the most appropriate way and offering the most appropriate service. Good data drives the process. According to Accenture, 83% of shoppers would exchange data for a more personalized experience. And now that you have a less formal engagement, see No. 3, you can start to ask for specific information that will support better personalization and interaction with your customers and prospects.

The regulations actually help you become a better marketer. You have an engaged audience, effective communications, happy salespeople, you are on your way to growing your business.

How are you embracing privacy requirements? What’s worked best for you?

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