Personalization is supposed to be the marketer’s secret weapon for cutting through content noise. Studies have shown that, when done correctly, personalization can deliver five to eight times more ROI on your marketing spend.
But marketers have spent decades trying to personalize content and struggled every step of the way. Until recently, the technology simply wasn’t there to scale personalized marketing activities. Even now, with all of the necessary technology and customer information available to you, bad data can create a barrier between you and personalization.
If you’re ever struggling against bad data, purchasing third-party insights can help fill in the gaps and give you a foundation for personalization.
However, bad data isn’t the only barrier to personalized marketing. Increasingly-strict data privacy regulations can put a halt to personalization efforts if you don’t adapt.
Marketing in the Era of Data Privacy
The marketing world spent about two years worrying about the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) before it went into effect in May 2018. Suddenly, your ability to collect first-party data about customers would be severely restricted. And as a result, your ability to gain the insights necessary for personalization would be hampered. Worse yet, any violations could result in millions of dollars in penalties—more than enough to offset the potential benefits of average personalization.
Just when you started to get comfortable with GDPR regulations, more data privacy laws are emerging. Now, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) is on the horizon and is being heralded as the U.S. version of GDPR. While the CCPA is similar to the GDPR, complying with one doesn’t necessarily mean you’re compliant with the other.
One of the unique marketing challenges that will come along with CCPA enforcement is that it could restrict your ability to purchase third-party data. Unlike the GDPR, which broadly focuses all data processing, the CCPA is concerned mainly with the sale of consumer data. That means that the data vendors who once filled the gaps in your first-party data will now be restricted in what they can and can’t sell to you.
The result will be an era of marketing that is even more focused on first-party data collection. Being able to build compliant pipelines for first-party data generation will be key to successful personalization.
However, if it were so easy to gather enough quality first-party data to scale marketing personalization, you would have already done it.
Instead of writing off third-party data providers altogether, it’s important to spend more time searching for the right partner. In the era of consumer privacy, you can’t take a high-volume approach to purchasing third-party data. Rather, you need a partner that can address compliance on your behalf while drilling down into those contacts and accounts that best fit your business. This is where intent data comes into play.
Finding an Intent Data Provider Built for Data Privacy
GDPR is already here, CCPA is coming, and more data privacy regulations are surely on the horizon. This isn’t a fading trend you can ignore if you want to make the most of data in your marketing efforts. You need to take concrete steps toward personalizing your marketing while maintaining data privacy compliance.
You might be tempted to avoid third-party data in an effort to cut costs, putting the responsibility of data privacy compliance squarely on your own shoulders. But all it will take is one violation to derail those cost-cutting efforts.
When you evaluate third-party intent data providers, make sure that they have proven success with data privacy compliance, including GDPR and CCPA. That will help you strike a balance between compliance and the data collection necessary to personalize your marketing—all without increasing risk for your organization.
The challenge is finding intent data providers that follow through on their compliance promises.
If you want to learn more about compliant third-party intent data and how it can benefit your personalized marketing, download our free report, Demystifying B2B Purchase Intent Data.
