Here at Naked Marketing we believe that GDPR is a really good thing for us, both as consumers and also for those who believe in good marketing.

The marketplace seems to be full of doom and gloom regarding GDPR and it is fair to say there is a lot of conflicting information and opinion out there. But we have been reading and listening to a lot of this information and have tried to highlight just a few points that we think make this a great opportunity for marketeers.

1. A chance to review what customer data you hold and its relevance, the opportunity to pool information from across departments to understand what information they hold and how and why they use it.

2. An opportunity to review how you plan to communicate with your customers and prospects moving forward.

3. The opportunity to reinforce trust in your customer base, through a transparent approach.

4. A breath of fresh air, which allows us to challenge the notion of 'Is bigger better?' There has been a culture of building bigger and bigger databases, now we can look at the quality of our data in a positive light. Small and segmented will give us marketeers better results!

5. If your audience has more control (and they certainly will) then you will be creating greater engagement and can align your key messages to them. The result should be higher ROI, which has to be a good thing.

6. A far more bespoke approach should provide greater customer experiences as the messages become more relevant to the audience. Is the information relevant, interesting, useful or exciting to the customer? If the answer is no then don’t share it!

7. A chance to look at your servers and find the stuff you have forgotten you had, the databases that have not seen the light of day for years… well now is the time to update or delete them.

8. Security of your data is, and should be, under the microscope. Do you know where your data is stored? Is it safe? From a digital perspective are you doing everything you could? Do you have SSL in place? Does your website have a suitable privacy policy?

9. With the customer more in control, if they want to hear from you then the chances are you should be easier to spot once the volume of unsolicited messaging starts to reduce.

10. Innovate. Now is the perfect time to look at the marketing tools you use and the tools you currently don’t use and decide are they fit for purpose?

As part of Naked’s approach to GDPR, we are offering a free GDPR best practice audit for websites. If you would like us to produce one for yourselves we would be more than happy to do so.

And of course, if you would like to have an informal chat or coffee with one of the Naked team, about this, or any other marketing issues, we would be delighted to hear from you.

Whilst we have endeavoured to provide you with some top tips, they are only that and none of this should be considered legal advice. We are happy to share our opinion and thoughts on our understanding of what GDPR and best practice look like, but if you were concerned we would recommend seeking legal advice.

By James Hale on 14.03.18