GDPR: Delivering Deliverability
At THE CRM Agency, we see the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as a welcome update.
GDPR comes into force for all EU citizens on 25 May 2018. We wouldn’t be surprised if you, like us, are seeing a growing number of companies and independent consultants lining up as GDPR “experts”.
Before you go (any further) down this route, our advice is, in the words of Douglas Adams, “Don’t panic!” and consult the excellent “getting ready for the GDPR” advice from the UK’s independent Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
It covers:
Accountability and governance
Key areas to consider
Individuals’ rights
Breach notification
Transfer of data
and gives you a Red, Amber, Green (RAG) rating for your current state of readiness.
THE-GDPRopportunity
Since the start of 2017, THE has been helping a number of our clients think through their readiness for GDPR and we're delighted to share with you that it’s really awakened an interest in how their customers journey through their communications. We’ve been workshopping Customer Journey Mapping, turning “one strike and you’re out” unsubscribes into preference centres/centers, designing bespoke campaigns to (re)opt-in customers, segmenting programs to maximise relevance and, possibly most interesting of all, analysing REAL email deliverability.
We’ve all seen the various Email Service Providers’ (ESPs) reports claiming:
mail file count - bounces = deliverability (%)
Well, you need to dig a bit deeper to discover true deliverability and typically you'll uncover the yawning chasm between your email’s arrival at the outer periphery of your customer's Internet Service Provider (ISP) e.g. Gmail and it nestling successfully in their inbox, ready for them to open and interact.
Most ESPs don’t possess let alone share the latter information, to any greater extent that registering a click as evidence of an open. So, reported “deliverability” of e.g. >96% is commonplace - and misleading.
Have you even noticed a huge discrepancy in the relative open and click through rates when you split out your customers according to their ISP. For example, comparing the relative performance of Gmail-using customers from those using Yahoo!, Hotmail and all the others? If not, prepare to be astounded.
To address this issue, we’ve launched THE-DELIVERABILITYreport as a dedicated research and analysis service, and are working with our key specialist deliverability partners, who have extensive user panel data, helping us to bring true deliverability into stark focus and ensure much higher inbox success for our clients.
If you’d like to improve your email deliverability SIGNIFICANTLY, we’d love to hear from you.
