Clarifying data processing implications on marketing campaigns today
Data Protection rules are growing exponentially all over the world, and applying them for marketing campaigns specifically can be difficult. However, companies must understand and comply with them to have efficient and successful marketing campaigns without being penalized.
What does this mean for financial institutions?
Today, legal and compliance teams responsible for data protection matters communicate data protection restrictions to marketing to avoid potential regulatory breaches. If there are questions about specific interpretations, the marketing person responsible for the deployment has to reach out to the data protection officer.
To fulfil all regulatory requirements, the data protection team needs to cautiously check numerous requests from different stakeholders to support and clarify legal questions. However, one thing that remains a constant challenge despite the increased workload is the outdated tools they use. For example, the referring of case-by-case legal opinions and the traditional text-based format from external law firms.
Companies find themselves stuck, and no one can move faster and more efficiently
First, data protection teams struggle to keep track and interpret country-specific regulations affecting marketing initiatives.
Secondly, marketing teams get frustrated since they cannot and do not want to risk going out with unapproved marketing campaigns, damaging internal relationships.
Finally, the business itself suffers since marketing activities are executed too slow due to complex regulatory clarifications.
The challenge of data protection restrictions on marketing activities
Data protection regulations, especially the ones that influence marketing activities, vary from country to country. Additionally, it might be tricky for internal stakeholders to fully link the operational details of marketing teams with the exact data protection requirements or restrictions that arise due to handling types of data from specific data subjects.
Understanding both the facts of a specific case and these country-specific marketing elements is just one side of the story. Additional complexity comes with different marketing initiatives and campaigns rolled-out on a global basis need to be balanced for all the underlying individual country restrictions. This is a hurdle when dealing with country-specific data, besides being a time and resource-consuming analysis.
This regulatory complexity results in barriers that leave companies with scarce options to stay compliant:
| Business potential | Risk minimisation | Ease of scalability | Country comparison | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Conduct only domestic marketing campaigns and clarify restrictions case by case | + | +++ | ++ | + |
| Conduct global marketing campaigns and clarify restrictions case by case | ++ | ++ | + | ++ |
| Introduce digital marketing implication checks that clarify single and multi-country restrictions | ++++ | ++++ | ++++ | ++++ |
Introducing digital marketing campaign checks
Marketing financial services in the digital age are becoming a highly complex task. The more regulations are being adopted, the harder it is for data protection and marketing teams to work together. The outdated paper-based manner does not help with staying in check with the growing number of data processing requirements for every outreach campaign. The volume of rules is immense, and with the added growing complexity to each jurisdiction, it becomes increasingly difficult to perform.
Implementing a digital data protection solution for the compliance and legal teams with customizable and scalable rules is the best option for stopping these internal noises.
To do that, one would need the following:
- Machine-readable rules: a set of country-specific data protection rules customizable by in-house legal teams;
- Dynamic data protection answers: a way for marketing teams to access quick regulatory answers for conducting compliant marketing campaigns through an easy-to-use app or via intranet;
- Easy integration options: technology empowering internal IT to integrate machine-readable data protection rules into in-house processes and tools
Benefits of using digital global marketing implication checks
- Support marketing teams’ projects with fast feedback on complex requirements
- Compare different multi-jurisdictional marketing situations;
- Remain compliant with the right set of digitised data protection rules;
- Scale thanks to the easy addition of new countries or comparison features.
