Don’t panic! This is NOT another doom and gloom style blog post about how the looming GDPR changes will affect you and make your life harder.
Instead… I want to share with you a simple process that you can follow to start preparing your business for the ‘post May 2018’ world.
So today you can relax and forget about terms like “Privacy Impact Assessments, biometric data, Controller, Cross border processing and Pseudonymising” and get some clear and actionable advice for something that you can do.
And yes… would you believe Pseudonymising is really an EU GDPR compliance term. It means: “Personal data processing so that the data can no longer be attributed to a specific data subject” Amazing! It’s no wonder that the whole of the E.U is going crazy over this.
But back to the point at hand…
Today, we want to outline a simple 4 step strategy for you to follow that will help preserve the database of contacts that you are marketing to.
You do have a marketing list don’t you?
If not don’t panic. Carry on reading, because it is relevent to you and will also give you some insight into how you can market your practice now and over the course of next year.
However…….assuming that (like all successful accountancy practices), you do have database of suitable companies whom you are regularly marketing to, with the aim of eventually winning as clients, then this is where the GDPR comes in to play. All of that data that you already hold will be useless. This is unless you can prove that all of the people on your database, have given you explicit consent that it is OK for you to contact them.
So todays goal is to help you get that consent and leverage the process so it also works after the GDPR kicks in.
And this is how you do it.
GOAL:
Gain consent from your database by making sure that they opt-in to it prior to May 2018.
METHOD:
Email a segmented database to get them to visit a landing page, where they can enter in their information to download a piece of content that is of interest to them.
For example, create a downloadable PDF called “How to move your consulting accountants to the cloud” and email it to a list of consultants.
They get some sound advice and you get their details.
SPECIFICS:
- Breakdown your data in to markets
- Charities
- Online retailers
- Etc
- Create a branded piece of downloadable content for each sector
- 6 Tax saving strategies for “Design Agencies”
- 3 Ways to automate your “e-commerce” empire bookkeeping
- Save it as a PDF and upload it to somewhere like Amazon S3
- Create a landing page that delivers the downloadable content in return for their consent and email address
- Use this software for an easy way to do this. It’s by far the cheapest and most effective solution for you.
- Create one landing page per sector and configure the thank you page to automatically send visitors the content
- Create a MailChimp or Hubspot account to collect the details of people who have opted in
- Make sure that you include on the landing page that by downloading the content they agree to be contacted by you in the future. (You may want to check with your legal term for specific industry related phrases)
- Email your database to the landing page.
- You can upload your email marketing list to places like www.elasticemail.com to quickly send them a message.
Rinse and repeat…
Now… moving on, once you have that all set up, LEVERAGE IT.
Share links via social media sites, create SEO friendly blog posts and drive traffic via paid advertising to the landing page. Little by little you will build up a solid GDPR friendly inbound marketable database.
Does all that make sense? Sound complicated? It needs to be done.
If you need a hand to replicate this process just contact us here
