CDPs: Powering Your Consent Management Efforts
Even with privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA censuring the use of data, very few have been able to meet the regulations’ requirements. A 2019 survey among 680 websites in UK revealed that only 11.8% websites are compliant with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).[1] Further, with each passing day, new regulations and voluntary undertakings have made privacy not just a matter of compliance, but an integral part of customer experience. A flawless privacy experience has become as imperative as a seamless customer experience.
Enter key technologies such as Consent Management Platforms (CMPs) that act as a frontline software for collecting consent from visitors. While gathering data privacy preferences doesn’t exactly fulfil the requisite regulations, consent management acts as the foundational step for the journey. In a user-friendly manner, consent management software provides the option to the viewers to opt out of sharing their data. But these standalone consent management technologies are being used way beyond their shelf life. Though they meet the legal obligations put forth by the regulations, they are unable to integrate consent management to the company’s marketing efforts and other marketing technologies. Non-IT professionals also find it difficult to drive insights and design a quality customer experience. A 2020 survey from WARC’s Marketers Toolkit quoted that 52% of marketers feel that their brands need to improve their consent management and data privacy efforts.[2]
The best way to move forward is to adopt marketing technologies that have built-in consent management feature, and which move beyond acquiring consent to manage customer’s identities, preferences and attributes. Customer Data Platforms, by unifying data from various sources are uniquely positioned to meet regulatory obligations as well as utilize the consented data to drive marketing efforts.
· Swift Response to Data Requests — According to Gartner, manually fulfilling a Data Subject Access Request (DSAR) can cost the company upwards of 1400$ per request. In other words, lack of automation around data may end in hundreds of thousands for simply complying to regulations. Customer Data Platforms, by unifying customers information offer a single trusted data source for privacy offices to respond to such requests.
· Privacy Management across Channels — CDPs are channel agnostic. They act as a trusted repository for customer information across channels, handling their activation, enrichment, usage and most importantly, ensure that privacy preferences are honoured irrespective of the channels. Customer Data Platforms also control the accessibility of the data by various technology destinations, which ensures that customer information is being retrieved on a need-to-know basis.
· Ease of usage — Unlike other consent management tools, Customer Data Platforms are tools for marketers. Marketers need not depend upon IT professionals to access and activate data.
· Individualizing consent management — Dry, static and generic consent messaging are things of the past, limited by erstwhile CMPs and related technologies. Customer Data Platforms enable tailor-made consent messages synced with real-time customers attributes. Apart from offering a premier customer experience, tailor-made messaging may also improve opt-in rates.
Companies should aim to build an end-to-end consent management strategy that complements their personalization efforts. Standalone consent management technologies may in fact act as a deterrent for marketers to drive better customer experience. Holland.com, by building an end-to-end consent management strategy, has been able to increase its acceptance rate from 28% to 75%.[3] Marketers, only need to trust CDP to drive a trusted customer experience.
[1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2001.02479.pdf
[2] https://www.blueconic.com/blog/consent-management-platforms/
[3] https://www.blueconic.com/resources/case-study-holland-com-increases-gdpr-consent-rate-to-75-percent/
