The best thing to do is the right thing

Next Friday I will be delivering a seminar for the Northants Chamber of Commerce, titled ‘Promoting your business in a GDPR world’. I was asked to do this after a conversation with a friend about becoming a member of the local chamber. He wanted to know more about what Silver Jet Insight does and as soon as the phrase data marketing was used, he wondered about how much the GDPR would affect business.

The answer was ‘quite a bit’ and I explained a little bit of how. The Chamber had been looking for someone to talk about the practicalities of GDPR to its members and Silver Jet Insight was asked to host a seminar for members at one of their exhibitions.

What was clear from that conversation is that it appears as though I am extremely passionate about data protection, which could be added to the list of reasons why I wouldn’t be the perfect dinner party guest, along with cycling, cars and motorsport.

But I don’t believe I’m especially passionate about data protection, but I am passionate about my personal values which include integrity and doing the right thing.

Data and analytics are areas that have exploded over the last 5 years, with an ever-increasing emphasis being put on using them to operate more efficiently and grow more effectively.

With that rapid growth, some questionable practices have also arrived and as can be expected in a period of such accelerated change, legislation has yet to catch up.

Marketing primarily uses personal data. In a discipline that involves a huge amount of direct communication, personal data is essential to what we do, having it drives the success of our activity and without it the marketeer’s toolbox is massively reduced.

What we sometimes lose sight of the key word, personal. A database of 100,000 email addresses isn’t list a list of 100,000 digital locations to broadcast to, it is 100,000 people.

This is where my passion comes in, remembering that we are dealing with people and I have a fundamental belief in doing the right thing. If you would do the right thing for your partner, for your child, your parent, your neighbour, the old person struggling with their shopping, then why wouldn’t you do the right thing for your customers and your prospects.

Doing the right thing isn’t something to be seen as a frivolous activity, it’s a fundamental part of the customer experience and we all know that a great customer experience fosters loyalty a great relationship and ultimately greater sales and profit.

We all remember the great experiences with an element of fondness and remember the bad experiences with a tinge of anger or frustration, accompanied typically by a desire not to go back there again.

For me, doing the right thing is the first rule that I live by, I believe that it is the key to success, it is that which I am passionate about. It just so happens to be that I work in marketing and data protection is an important part of it.

GDPR is, to me, legislation catching up and making sure that we do the right thing. It’s now up to us to uncover the opportunity in it.

The content of the seminar will follow in the future, keep an eye out for the next couple of blogs.