Post-GDPR: Acquire the right customers with consent

By: Blake Watkinson, Junior Business Development Manager (London)

Now that most have weathered the GDPR storm, many are looking at their mailing lists much like they would a shipwreck – some as colossal as the Titanic. The true value of an email list isn’t how you use it, or how complex your CRM is, rather it represents the consumer’s genuine interest to hear from your brand’s products and services. Consent for consumer data is a brush stroke, albeit an important one, in a much bigger picture.

Think back to late-May – remember the waves of re-permissioning emails sent by brands you never knew existed? It’s most likely that these companies who contacted you couldn’t clearly and transparently provide where your consent originated against the post-GDPR backdrop – and it turns out there were a lot of them.
It’s no wonder most Email Service Providers (ESP’s) had their biggest week of the year, more so than Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined. The winners of GDPR have discovered that the attrition of their mailing lists were dormant subscribers who generated little to no return on investment.

What may be viewed as a mailing list buzzkill, GDPR instead will encourage a mass health check of company email lists. By requesting explicit consent from their database of users, many companies will be able to eliminate those ‘mark all as read’ types. This will potentially result in healthier and even more accurate open and click-through rates.

Despite this purge of unresponsive users, there is still a fair bit of messaging noise over the internet and expressed genuine interest remains somewhat of a white whale. While GDPR seeks to bring some clarity, many still struggle to cut through and have a positive impact on the consumer.

Rokt leverages what we have coined as the Transaction MomentTM- the state of mind that consumers enter during the purchase journey. After a purchase is made, emotions are more positive and engagement is high. By investing in this psyche, brands can have a positive impact by delivering anticipated, relevant and personalised messages to online shoppers who are genuinely interested in hearing from you. The most valuable subscribers are those who actively opt into a relationship with a brand. At Rokt, explicit and informed consent has always been a core part of our business- GDPR just shone a big, bright spotlight on it.

“What may be viewed as a mailing list buzzkill, GDPR instead will encourage a mass health check of company email lists.”

Consider the case of UK-based, luxury cabin escapes company, Forest Holidays, who was looking to expand their customer database by working with Rokt to acquire high quality, new email subscribers. A five-week-long campaign promoted special offers, and the opportunity to subscribe to email newsletters on the confirmation page of completed e-commerce transactions. A substantial number of new email newsletter subscribers were delivered to Forest Holidays and, in line with Rokt’s consent based practices, subscribers from the Rokt network were noted to have an open rate that was 40% higher than other audiences.

Never mind about building bridges, let’s rebuild that boat that keeps your CRM afloat. Customers ahoy!