CMOs are leveraging data and compliance to augment their marketing ecosystem

Blog: Capgemini CTO Blog

Data. It’s either a marketer’s dream or a compliance nightmare. Whichever way you look at it, data and compliance in combination are a strategically important topic for today’s CMOs.

New technology and channels, along with rising volumes of data, provide new ways of engaging with customers. But with this data comes challenges relating to evolving and inconsistent regulatory and legal environments. Surprisingly, rather than fixing the issues and investing in a compliant way of handling data as a vital business asset, many CMOs are simply allocating budget to paying fines for non-compliance. But they are looking in the wrong direction.

At Capgemini, we believe that getting to grips with your data compliance offers an extraordinary opportunity to build trust and make privacy both a brand differentiator and growth enabler. In this blog, we look at the data and compliance challenge from the two perspectives of the customer and the CMO.

CMOs are well placed to understand what their customers want and target engagement in a way that addresses any concerns regarding customer privacy.

Making customer data count – the CMO challenge

CMOs must keep up with new channels and focus on becoming leaders of change instead of being disrupted. It’s up to the CMO to establish the Marketing/IT shared goals and represent the voice of the customer inside the company – embedding data and compliance every step of the way.

There are several internal hurdles for the CMO to climb to transform data into an asset:

A rapidly evolving business context that requires CMOs to build a comprehensive strategy to tackle governance & compliance, internal collaboration and external partners.
Handle scattered and siloed customer data with robust data management system ensuring high data quality and cross-device connectivity.
Move away from regulations and ethics perceived as constraints and tackle data regulation across geographies.

This list of data- and compliance-driven challenges is not insurmountable. Addressing them gives the CMO control and an overview of all data relevant to Marketing activities. In turn, this clarity enables a seamless and holistic approach to customer data privacy, building trust in the brand.

Data and compliance are Marketing gold

Consumers want to know their data privacy is being taken seriously. CMOs have an opportunity to stop paying non-compliance penalties and invest the budget in improving brand differentiation. It’s surely a win-win situation.

So, how do you make it happen? How can the CMOs enable and/or establish compliant and data-driven Marketing that makes the customer happy?

CMOs need to focus on to the three pillars of customer need: Transparency, Accountability, and Empowerment.

Transparency – create a value adding database
Accountability – ensure thorough consent management
Empowerment – give people greater control over their data and actions

Data and compliance-led transformation

At Capgemini, we have helped many leading brands to transform their approaches to privacy, data, and compliance. The outcome is typically stronger customer centricity and brand trust built around a transformed marketing data landscape.

To reach this outcome, we have developed an approach that enables the compliant handling of customer data and consent. This will become an important strategic need in the coming years.

What we do

Our proven and standardized approach enables us to gain an understanding of our clients’ data organizations, assure results, and safeguard their customers’ personally identifiable information (PII).

Here’s how:

We analyze all the information relating to how data privacy/compliance is organized.
We identify potential threats to compliance from the CMO’s perspective.
We define safeguards/actions to tackle the identified threats.
We improve long-term compliant data handling and drive efficiency.

What direction will you take?

We hope this blog persuades you that data and compliance are a prerequisite for marketing success. While withholding budget for possible fines might offer a quick fix, it won’t turn your customer data into the valuable data asset it could be.

Rethinking your data, tracking it across every marketing touchpoint, safeguarding it, and using it responsibly will reap rewards. How? By ensuring your marketing content is managed compliantly, targeted relevantly, and has a defined purpose.

At Capgemini, we combine our marketing and data compliance experience to identify the threats, put in place measures enabling compliance, and ensure our clients are trusted to capture and use customer data appropriately.

To know more, read our detailed point of view paper on Connected Marketing – Data and Compliance.

This blog was authored by:

Marian Meyer-Tischler

Senior Manager | Insights Driven Enterprise

Svetlana Ollivier

Manager | Insights Driven Enterprise