Data Privacy and Its Effects on Marketing in 2022

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Hi Devin, welcome back to Digital Marketing Mondays. How you doing?

Doing good, enjoyed a great holiday break and yeah, now trying to keep up in the frenzy of the next 3 weeks between now and, you know what, the next holiday season. Yeah, yeah. It's gonna be crazy.

We're in that gap and we're talking about planning. We talked last time about planning. For 2021. Why don't we talk a little bit about some of the, just briefly, about some of the sort of the strategies, what we see coming in 2022, and, you know, what, what people should be doing in relation to what's going on. So, I mean, the big thing, we've mentioned this before, is the issue of privacy and the increasing focus on that by large, you know, platform vendors. Led by Apple, I would say. They've really kind of set the pace. And I think, you know, I think Google and Facebook and, you know, other large platforms, social media platforms, they're going to need to kind of follow suit. So where does that, where does that leave marketers?

Yeah, it's a great question. And I think, you know, in terms of privacy, it's going to become central in the US. We've already seen policies over in Europe and even in California become pretty prevalent. So I think there will be a day of reckoning coming, coming for data, and, and the wild, wild west will be long gone fairly soon. And I suspect that that will probably be by issue of federal mandate, given especially all the crackdowns that are happening against antitrust policies with companies like Google and Apple currently. So I suspect that we've got some pretty hefty privacy concerns coming our way. And with that, as marketers, we need to be thinking about how, how are we collecting our data currently? What's considered third party versus first party? And what are the tactics and things that you could be doing to collect first party data as well as be able to measure on that on your own data as well? So I think there's a lot of nuance there. And we certainly don't know what the entire future holds with you know, because there's no federal regulations yet, but it's coming. So I think that's what marketers need to be thinking about for, you know, especially for 2022.

So, so practically speaking, what can— what, what should a marketer do? So we're saying you're going to get less data, right? You're going to— and, and especially third-party data. So whatever data you can collect, of course, is, is, is really valuable. Now you can't rely on other people to provide that data for you. So how does that affect things like targeting and landing page offers and things like that?

No, it's a good question. It's, it's going to require a big strategy shift in terms of how you're currently doing things like targeting. Whereas, you know, we've historically, we've created audiences inside of Google Analytics, you sync them over to Google Ads as an example, and then you use that for your remarketing efforts and it's a no-brainer, right? right? We're now going to have to think about how can we do this from a list-based perspective, right? Or how can you generate your own analytical data sources, right, that's considered first-party data, and then being able to aggregate and generate those audiences and send them over and use them on the platform. So I think it's going to be a lot more reliant on list syncing coming out of third-party marketing automation tools like HubSpot. Especially.

Well, that's interesting. And now I've also found that there seems to be, you know, we deal with a number of different clients, there seems to be an increased focus by those clients on ensuring that, um, you know, we as an agency protect any data that they have, you know, personal data that, uh, that we're storing. So should we come in contact with personal data our systems need to be in place to protect that as well. So, you know, and that sort of brings us to the point where, you know, we're coming from a place where data was sort of scattered throughout the enterprise, you know, and marketing used a lot of spreadsheets and, you know, you had your mail, your email system, and you had your CRM and you had different solutions out there. And we do see those kind of coming together, I guess. Right. So is that going to help or harm or hinder marketers, do you think?

Yeah, I think there's going to be, along with this reckoning of, you know, privacy and privacy concerns, I think unified databases is going to be a huge point of emphasis, right? It's going to be 2022 here fairly soon. There's zero excuse not to have a central place with everybody's kind of information all combined, right? And that includes things like you know, any personally identifiable information, their web history, engagement, you know, if they've been talking with sales or if they bought something online, right? Like, all of that needs to be contained into a single place. And I think as marketers, there's zero excuse to not have a unified database, really, I'd say starting next year, right? We already have a lot of integrations that are available between existing tools, which I think we'll cut the mustard for now, proverbially speaking, but we really need to be thinking about, you know, how could we have a central place for data? And that's gonna be another critical component in 2022. And that especially relates back to the privacy issues that we're gonna be experiencing as well.

Well, I would think that having a centralized, having centralized data would make it easier to control, you know, the privacy and security of that information, right? Easier, obviously, than, you know, having one centralized database that's carefully locked up and protected, even if it's in the cloud, is better than having a bunch of people, you know, going home with spreadsheets and things like that on their laptops. So that's gonna, and I think it'll make you more effective because you'll have all the factors that, you know, you can look at the profile, a broader profile on an individual if it's all in one place a lot more easily than if you have to access a bunch of different locations for that data, right?

Absolutely. It's going to be cheaper and more efficient to actually, uh, to manage that database if it's all in the same place. And you could be a lot more smart and tactical about how you actually approach people. I loved, uh, yesterday I actually received an email, uh, from a sport watch company. I won't name names, but, uh, I received an email from them and it said, "Hey, it's been a little while. We're tidying up our database. Are you still interested in receiving emails?" And I thought that that was, I don't know, like to me as a marketer, I get hundreds if not thousands of emails a day it seems like. So to be coming off of this rush of Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and all these sale, sale, sale emails, and now suddenly seeing a, "Hey, we're thinking of you," we're tidying up our database. Are you really interested in our content? That was a huge breath of fresh air for me, and I suspect a lot of people would feel the same way if they did receive an email like that and they've been in your database for a long time and just haven't really been engaging, or they haven't received many emails in general. So I do think that there's, uh, there's a lot of thoughtful strategies and tactics that can go into place with a centralized database.

Yeah, okay. So tip— the, the summary is Quality, that what you just said is really quality over quantity, making sure the people that you're dealing with out there, you know, you're not annoying them, but you're actually providing good information to them and they're engaged and interested. So that's key. Centralizing your data and making sure that your landing pages and offers, you know, are really tuned very well to convert people. Don't add confusion, don't make it complicated, make it attractive and make it simple. I'd say those are sort of the three main mantras I'm taking away from this session. And so, Devin, thank you very much. Thanks for covering that. And I think we can, we can wrap it there.

Sounds good. Thanks, Hans.

All right. Take care.

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