What drives a successful campaign? Is it targeting your messages to the right demographics or your ability to speak to customers on an emotional level? Maybe your organisation is driven by a sense of purpose or simply has the most engaging content. There are as many approaches to marketing as there are marketers, but one element is consistent. You cannot influence people who don’t hear you.

This is why implementing the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and associated new e-privacy laws from May 2018 is the greatest challenge facing marketers for a generation. These regulations are far ranging in scope: they impact whenever an organisation processes information relating to an identifiable person.

The regulations impact how organisations can send marketing material to their customers, contacts and new prospect. Organisations will have to prove they have consent or a valid legitimate interest to contact a consumer.

When seeking consent, approaches commonly used such as pre-ticked boxes and opt-outs will no longer be permitted. Early research suggests that only a minority of consumers would opt-in to marketing communications under these restrictions.

The stage is set for an almighty communications challenge. The brands who can convince their customers and prospects to opt-in to marketing emails will have an enviable competitive advantage, those who cannot could lose millions of potential prospects.

Nudging consent

H+K’s behavioural science team has developed a unique solution to this problem, one that is helping organisation acquire and retain marketing permissions. By applying the latest scientific thinking in how humans make decisions, we’ve helped financial service providers and consumer organisations improve their consent rates by between a quarter and a third. Similar approaches are helping nudge consumers when they express a channel preference.

We do this by making what might at first glance appear as only small changes to how the consent choice is set out and the accompanying messages – so-called ’nudges’. These are informed by the latest behavioural science insights. We’ve tested this using big datasets so can be sure of the impact and how to best tailor the right approach to different organisations.

Get in touch if you’d like to discuss the impact of the GDPR.