The issues surrounding ethical data collection and usage long predate GDPR and the marketing industry can take some useful lessons from the financial sector, according to a team at analytics firm Marketscience Truesight.

Writing in the May issue of Admap, the subject of which is Data Ethics, David Dixon (founder/CEO), Sebastian Shapiro (founder) and Nicole Wolf (director of communications) point to the effects of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act in the US.

Passed in the wake of the financial crisis, it was designed to prevent another economic recession, and while it covers a far wider range than just digital data, the authors note it originated, in part, from similar needs to the GDPR – a need to protect user information.

In their article, Potential implications for marketing, measurement and ROI in a post-GDPR world, they suggest that “the finance industry, for approximately the last 10 years, has been an early experiment in responsible data handling, and an example of how marketing might be impacted down the line”.

Truesight’s own modelling work and analysis within the retail banking sector over this period highlights several developments:
  • A shift from customer acquisition to customer deepening.
  • Stronger branding in messaging, fewer promotional offers.
  • Owned and earned channels of marketing more effective than paid.
  • More long-term customer-driven strategies.
Banks have had to get smarter about how they use data, and post-GDPR brands are having to do the same, with less access to data and tighter rules around its use.

First-party data becomes increasingly important but has the potential to skew marketing efforts towards deepening relationships with a brand’s current audience versus prospecting new ones, the authors note.

“As analysts, we would expect to see a less effective role of digital advertising driving acquisition in marketing measurement models, and a more effective role in digital channels driving ROI of customer engagement,” they say.

And with digital platforms revising their internal flow of data to manage privacy issues, multi-touch attribution modelling will only get more difficult, they add, a development that will necessitate more aggregation of data which omits the need for opt-ins but still reveals group trends.

The future is challenging, but Dixon, Shapiro and Wolf believe that brands can flourish – “by living as an ethical brand, deepening relationships with customers, and aggregating data to a top-down analysis”.

This issue of Admap features a selection of articles by thought leaders from across the globe, including Bob Hoffman and Ann Cavoukian. WARC subscribers can access the deck – Data ethics – which summarises the expert advice from contributors and key considerations on this important topic.

Sourced from Admap