IMAGE SOURCE - http://www.cumbriacrack.com/2013/08/13/aspatria-no-cold-calling-zone-to-crackdown-on-rogue-traders/
After getting home from a hard day of work the last thing you
want to hear is the home phone ringing on the other side of the room. You get
off of your comfortable sofa and pick up the phone – to be asked to informed of
a ‘2 for 1’ offer on the purchase of a pair of glasses from an opticians that
you visited over 10 years ago. Well these calls could soon be non-existent,
unless you GIVE permission to these companies. The same rules would apply to
marketing e-mails and post that we receive. The EU is on the verge of passing a
law (named the EU Data Protection Regulation) that will result in companies and
businesses having to ask you, as a customer, to give permission to use/store
your details for marketing purposes upon receiving them. As the rules currently
stand businesses are able to use your details for their own marketing purposes
if you have given them the details and you can lawfully opt-out of receiving these
calls, emails or post at any point. So in layman terms it would turn from an
OPT-OUT process to an OPT-IN process.
Adding to this the
IP address will be considered ‘personal data’ leading to a lot of inaccuracies
on how many people have actually visited a business’s website.
“The flow and profiling of data will be
restricted, which will impact the effectiveness of your direct marketing. IP
addresses will be listed as personal data. So you will need consent from
visitors to record and store their activity on your website. This will affect
web analytics and online marketing”
SOURCE - http://www.thesalespro.co.uk/Sales_News/ID/1379/Is_the_EU_about_to_strangle_direct_selling.aspx
As a person who has worked in retail in
previous positions, I have witnessed first-hand how reliant companies are on their
marketing to entice customers away from competitor businesses. The optical company
that I worked for would send out thousands of letters to patients on their
system. These letters would include vouchers for special offers, and an upsurge
in the booking of sight tests and conversion to purchases thereafter would be very
noticeable. Patients/Customers would like to have that physical copy of a
voucher that they received in the post – the same applies to an e-mail in which
a voucher is attached that they have the option to print out. The same trend of
how affective marketing is applies not only to retail but also to insurance
companies, travel agents and the like.
IMAGE SOURCE - http://www.businesscomputingworld.co.uk/ec-data-protection-regulation-is-it-cloud-friendly/
In my opinion, if I
was being asked to opt-in for e-mails, phone calls or post from companies I
would instinctively reject the offer. Upon further thinking, I would aim to
accept the offer of receiving marketing updates. It is important that we
support companies in what they aim to do, and with thousands of companies going
out of business we need to keep them growing strong, before it leads to the
loss of income for companies which would in turn lead to loss of job roles. The
loss of job roles would not only apply to sales representatives or telesales personnel
but also for employees in the Marketing sector. With the loss of IP and e-mail
addresses, and other similar types of personal data, they would have no data to
record and no way to send out advertisement to potential buyers or customers.
The law is due to be passed by the EU by
December 2014 and brought into action by 2016. Many are challenging the new
regulations with Kohnstamm,
a former chairman of the working Party Committee, believing the reforms will be
severely delayed:
“The
European Commission officially proposed data protection reforms in January 2012
but there are question marks over whether the wording of a final package will
be agreed upon by EU law makers before the end of the year. Once finalised at
EU level, the reforms would not kick in for a further two years, meaning it may
not be until 2017 until businesses have to comply with the new rules”
Upon the law being passed, any company with
over 250 staff members will need to fill the role of a Data Protection Officer.
A ‘National Supervisory Authority’ will be put into place by each country who
will investigate breaches of the regulations. Any breach could result in fines of up to £500,000 or 2% of their
global turnover.
Overall, I feel
that YES it is an inconvenience to receive these calls, emails and letters in
the post, but these types of marketing schemes are what keeps our businesses
active and growing. I’d be interested to hear what people have to say on the matter
in the comment section below.
No comments:
Post a Comment