GDPR: data protection laws

The General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR comes into force in May 2018.

I have been chatting with businesses far and wide about this and the consensus so far is most small and medium sized business owners aren’t ready for it.

Companies have been building their marketing databases over many years; collecting business cards, email addresses, LinkedIn contacts and buying or renting email lists. These contacts may have found their way into the company database or CRM system. The companies may, from time to time, have sent out an email newsletter or promotional offer, with little or no response.

Yet, with less than a year to go, only 17% of businesses have taken the necessary steps for opt-in consent to comply with GDPR law.

GDPR: existing customers

The new regulations (2018) state that you must get explicit consent from your potential subscribers. This includes your existing customers.

This is by means of an ‘opt-in’ before you can email them anything.

The current advice from email providers is to start sending warm-up campaigns now, to encourage opt-ins from your existing database.

You must keep records of when they opted-in and provide a facility for them to request to be taken off your mailing list.

I see this as an opportunity for businesses to re-engage with their customers. To provide useful content that they actually want to read, rather than spam and self-promotional information disguised as e-mail marketing.

GDPR: the end of spam?

We’re all sick of spam and certainly don’t need any more emails in our inboxes.

The really valuable and useful information gets lost in the noise.

I educate my clients on the value that they can add to their customers, through an inbound marketing strategy.

If you really focus on solving the problems and pain points of your ideal customers with useful and relevant content, why wouldn’t they want to hear from you?

How to comply and engage with GDPR

If you practice inbound marketing it is much easier than you think.

You start with a series of steps.

  1. Understand precisely who your ideal customer is. Their likes, their dislikes, demographics, what keeps them up at night, what problems do you solve for them?
  2. Create a helpful guide that meets those needs. An e-book, a swipe file, a PDF guide or checklist.
  3. Make sure your website has a landing page where you can capture their email address in return for the free guide.
  4. Send a follow-up email requesting they confirm that they want to hear from you (the required double opt-in).
  5. Continue to nurture those customers with really valuable content that helps solve their problems.
  6. Include subtle calls to action that provide opportunities for them to engage with you or promote your services.
  7. Golden rule: build your audience first, sell later.
GDPR and inbound marketing

I have been an advocate of inbound marketing for many years.

No, it isn’t easy, but you can build a repeatable model for generating a consistent stream of ideal customers.

For more information about the inbound marketing process and our COG™ System, click here.

Inbound Marketing Case Study – Nigel Cliffe Value Exchange

Nigel from Value Exchange provides LinkedIn training to company directors to help them use the platform to generate leads.

Over the years he has ‘collected’ a sizeable database of contacts, in excess of 25,000 people. They are a mixture of people he has met at events, a couple of bought or inherited databases and every now and again he will export his connections from LinkedIn and import these into his CRM.

He believed that he had a valuable resource of potential customers.

It’s costing him around £125 per month to host all of these “prospects” in his CRM.

His intention is to develop an email campaign or a newsletter to send them, with the hope of generating new business.

He engaged with us to crack his Marketing Code and initiate our 3 step COG™ system.

I said “Nigel, you need to delete all of the emails and save yourself over £100 per month. Your list is worthless.”

“What!?” he cried. “That’s ridiculous. It’s taken me years to build that list!”

I replied “Your list isn’t YOUR list.”

I could see that he was quite sceptical and even quite upset that the ‘asset’ he thought he had was actually just a list of email addresses.

Let me explain.

You must get emails like this all the time.

People you vaguely remember meeting somewhere and now they are emailing you trying to sell you something. Did you ask for that information? At best you might just not open it, or bin it. At worst, you may get annoyed and unsubscribe.

What does it make you think of their brand? Annoying, intrusive, rude? Likely to buy from them? I think not!

What we teach and implement for our clients is how to build a list where people actually want to hear from you. The information that you provide is THAT valuable that they actually look forward to your emails. This is not as difficult as it sounds.

We spent time with Nigel really focusing in on who his ideal customer is, through ideal customer workshops and content mapping strategies, to understand exactly what problems he solves for his customers. We created an easy to understand 3-4 page checklist of how to get sales ready for LinkedIn. We built him a high-converting landing page and developed a sequence of emails to welcome his new subscribers.

We launched three months ago and so far he has had over 100 subscribers to his list. This resulted in 20 strategy calls and 3 sales to his bootcamp and a consulting client to deliver his full days training. He is absolutely delighted.

The two best things?

  1. We haven’t started promoting it yet. These are just people who happened upon the website.
  2. The people who have signed up for a strategy call were in the right headspace to buy. The rest of the people on the list aren’t quite ready to buy just yet, but we know they are highly interested in what Nigel sells. So over time, we can continue to build those relationships. How? By continuing to share valuable content that engages them and helps them solve their problems in their business.

Over time you can build a really strong audience of advocates, people who believe in you and know how you can help their business.

When they need what you sell, who will come top of mind? Someone who has been helpful and really understands what they need. YOU.

If you want to learn how LinkedIn can supercharge your lead generation, you can download Nigel’s free guide on his website www.valueexchange.co.uk and follow the sales funnel we built for him.

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