Since the early days of Marketing Automation, one of the main objectives in all Marketing teams has been to build and maintain a comprehensive email database. So, why would the UK pub chain JD Wetherspoon deliberately delete its email list of over 750,000 names? Not only this, their last email said (spoiler, many would have enjoyed sending the same, keep in file for future use): “we won’t be emailing you anymore and we have deleted your details” ( …) “from now on you can contact us and find out about events and news here”. It pointed at Wetherspoon’s Social Media sites. Why is this relevant to all marketers?
GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is the least appealing acronym that any B2B marketer could ever have hoped to encounter. As Regan George, CEO from The Social Effect Points out: “just in case you haven’t heard about GDPR – The General Data Protection Regulation is a new set of European laws that governs how you communicate, interact with and store prospect and customer data that comes into force May 25, 2018. There is a storm coming our way (a Privacy and Data Protection Tsunami) and unless we are fully prepared, this is going to be a marketing Armageddon”.
Why is this so important? The growing focus on Account Based Marketing in the B2B community shows that many organizations understand that they need to influence large decision making groups to be effective. Not only this, the ubiquity of social and digital communication channels mean that programmatic display advertising is increasingly important. Content needs to be visible in the channels and devices that buyers use.
Yes, but how will this affect the way we all use Marketing Automation? In the coming months, more and more companies will realize that email marketing can not be longer be trusted as main or sole source to communicate with customers.
We therefore see a perfect marketing storm arising from the combination of new communication channels; ABM focus in the B2B space; newer and more effective digital technologies and the advent of recent privacy legislation. It has the potential to displace forever Marketing Automation as the default-solution to communicate with customers. Moreover, if you have European email addresses in your database that are not GDPR compliant, you will simply not be able to use them from May 2018.
To know more on JD Wetherspoon decision to remove its email marketing database click here
To learn different ABM digital channels that will take you a step beyond, click here
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