Insightly_Ep08_final
===

Jordan: [00:00:00] Alyssa, I think today we're gonna talk a little bit about one of our, your least favorite topic, and a topic that I don't think a lot of people, ~like, ~necessarily enjoy.

Alyssa: Watch it be like our most popular one.

Jordan: ~But it is very necessary. ~So folks, buckle up, we're talking data privacy regulation today.

Alyssa: I told Jordan, I said, I will be here, I will ask you questions, but I cannot contribute anything of value.

Because Jordan truly is the brain behind all of this. [00:01:00] Because when we first met, I think that was one of our whole first conversations was all about data privacy. And I was, I think I understood maybe like, 10 to 20 percent. But ~we're gonna, I mean, I feel like ~we're gonna really try to bring it down. Right?

To try to make it understandable. For everyone listening, if you're like, what is, don't even know what that is, we're gonna try to give some definitions, some reason why you should care. So, yeah, let's start there. You know, what it is. What is this? Why should people care? What are the implications? And just high level it out for

Jordan: yeah. ~Well first I just want to preface, ~data privacy regulation does not need to be scary. ~It doesn't. I think when, ~if anyone has heard of GDPR in the European Union, ~the EU, ~that was enacted back in 2018, ~I think.~

~And I remember ~when I was a digital media director at that point, working with a lot of global brands, it was very scary. ~Because there was a lot of implication put behind it. ~If you violate the GDPR regulation, you could be fined up to like 2 million euros. ~Pretty significant. ~For US based companies that did business over in the EU, [00:02:00] It was very important for them to really pay attention to. And at that time, ~I, ~I was recognizing, like, this is a big deal, like, we do need to respect the regulation, we do need to understand the regulation.

This isn't the first, or, this won't be the last time we hear about this regulation. I was already kind of seeing that writing on the wall. But the way that it was set up and presented, I saw a lot of fear turn into, we are not doing anything with that over here in the States. And for those who thought that and thought that I was crazy for thinking that this was important, ha on you is all I have to say because data privacy regulation is heating up.

So what is it? Data privacy regulation, like we're just going to use the GDPR context because GDPR has set the stage for other regulations to follow. A couple of things that we need to be aware of is that about 75 percent of the global population will be under some sort of data privacy regulation [00:03:00] by the end of 2025.

~It is important. ~But if you break down what GDPR is and what a lot of these regulations entail, it's basically a regulation that says we as consumers have a right to our own data. I get to tell you what data of mine you get to capture. I get to tell you how you're allowed to use that data. If I want to request what data you have on me, I should be able to do that effectively.

If I want you to erase my data and forget that I ever existed in your system, I should have the capability to request that and you should have to do it. The reason why I got so nerdy on this topic is because ~of not so much the data privacy regulation and protecting customer data and really doing right by it, but this is ~In the marketing and advertising field is shifting things significantly and it's because over ~like ~the last decade with ~a lot of ~hyper targeted ~like ~digital advertising that you can run

those data points that you were able to [00:04:00] use in advertising to like hyper target the customers that you really want to reach and re market and re target and all of those kind of things were built off of.

data points that are taken from us and sold to data warehouses who turn around and sell that again to advertising publishers to then advertise to us. And so it, our data has been a commodity and it has generated billions of dollars for these industries. What's, ~what it's ~left us as consumers thinking and feeling like though is the internet's listening to me.

I was just talking about this and now my phone's following me. I mean, I don't know if Apple is actually listening to you or not, but that's not how that's ~working. I could go down a rabbit hole about how that's actually working, but that's not how that particular part of advertising is ~working. But now it's, I can't track you that deeply anymore because consumers want data privacy.

We don't want companies to have all of this information. on us to use against [00:05:00] us. And so the reason why we have to care about data privacy regulation, I mentioned that the EU has already enacted GDPR. It's been around since 2018. We here in the United States might think we don't need to care about it unless I'm a business that does business globally.

However, the United States is making moves there. You might have heard of the California Consumer Privacy Act. ~That's been around for a few years now. ~By the end of next year, there will be at least 14 states who have enacted ~additional, like, ~similar data privacy regulations. Kansas is not one of them, and based on our politics, will probably be one of the last, I would assume.

However, when you think about, e commerce and how a lot of business today isn't bound by where you're located in the country, that's actually kind of creating a little bit of a mess because ~like, and ~all of these regulations have the, consumers have the right to know what data you have on them, they have the right to tell you how to use it, they have a right to [00:06:00] erase it if they want to, you have to prove that ~you've ~once they've requested that.

Imagine how difficult that is as a business if you have to keep track of all of these regulations.

Alyssa: So like if we are a business in Kansas and we were doing business with someone in one of the states that brought this, you'd have to track which of the states is enacting this regulation and somehow manage those contacts?

Jordan: Like essentially what it means is that you have to have a system in place to be able to say that like if you called a company. And we'll use California since they've had theirs around for a few years now. Somebody in California gets something from Infofluency. And they realize, like, oh, Infofluency has data on me.

~I, ~forget me. How, however you met me, doesn't matter. I don't care if I gave you my business card at a networking event. I don't care if you, like, cold called me at one point. Forget me. [00:07:00] In your system. I'm done. You need to have the infrastructure in place to be able to say, okay, just so you know, here's the data that we have on you.

And here's the proof that you're no longer in there in our system. You know, outside of the only time that this, you don't have to erase someone completely is if you are actually doing business with them, right? Like if I'm a customer and we are actively working together and I say, Hey, I don't want my, I don't want you targeting me anymore for marketing.

You'll have to erase me and make sure that I'm opted out of any of those types of communications, but anything that is very particular to the work that we're doing together, that's just everyday business, right? The only way that I could get out of your system is by firing you in that case.

Alyssa: So I have a question about, ~like, ~platforms not specific to marketing. Like, there's so much, ~like, ~sales enablement platforms and a lot of talk around, ~like, ~email. ~Kind of like, ~People getting really specific about email people that are sending ~like ~thousands of emails a [00:08:00] day.

Is that related to this?

Jordan: Yeah, ~in a way I mean, ~email marketing has really just kind of gotten out of control, and we all probably spend a good chunk of our morning deleting things that we don't care about, but for some reason we won't take that extra step to unsubscribe because maybe we still care about it a little bit. ~You know? It does have a component of that, like We, ~There are other countries who have already enacted things years ago that would say you can't email somebody unless they've opted in. And GDPR says that too. ~Like, ~You have to have explicit consent from a consumer to be able to have their information. ~So like, in that case, you know, ~We were all very used to, for a long time, ~like, ~fill out this form and get this free white paper download, right? Well, once they filled that out here in the States, that was like, all right, you already gave us your email address. I can totally email you now. GDPR and other regulations similar to it say that, okay, I've filled out the contact form. I've gotten my white paper download. Now I'm getting another email to ask me [00:09:00] to explicitly confirm that I am willing to stay on this list.

So you've got the double opt in essentially. That's why when you sign on for like MailChimp or any of these other type of services, you have, that's why they ask you like, did these people actually opt in?

Where are you getting this list from? And you realize that if you are just blast emailing people who don't know you and you get a certain number of unsubscribes and spam, we're going to block you from our system. ~So.~ The nice thing is, is a lot of platforms, like if you're thinking like Salesforce, Zoho, ~like ~some of the CRM systems where if you've got these things connected and that's where you're pulling ~like ~your segmented list ~or something, ~they have a component in there.

A lot of them do now where if you needed to enact any of these data privacy points, I know Salesforce has the capability of helping you with that, and WordPress Gravity Forms has the capability that if [00:10:00] somebody's like, hey, I want you to erase my data, you can actually get the GDPR add on to basically scrub it for you.

The one thing that I don't want to forget to say, though, in this initial introduction, ~and this just happened recently, ~so I mentioned that 14 states have already made the moves to enact a data privacy regulation, ~which is kind, ~which will create a mess of what state and where am I doing business, which means that you have to track, you would need to have the infrastructure to track where my client's located. Just recently, Congress passed bipartisan support for what they're calling the ~American, what is it called, ~American Privacy Rights Act. Essentially the United States version of GDPR. So it's passed the House, it'll go to the next stages. There is a potential in the next, ~you know, ~session or so, depending on what other focuses take place.

There is a potential that within the next year or so, we might ~actually ~see more [00:11:00] of a federal regulation.

Alyssa: I wonder if, ~like, ~those data enrichment platforms, like, will ever be, ~like,~ banned.

Jordan: Give me an example of what you're

Alyssa: Sales Loft or Apollo, they, basically, you can go in there and you can segment a cold list. It gives you all of their information. People are~ You know, ~cold emailing, but what you're saying right now is that you just have to be able for them to say, I don't want this anymore, take me off, and you have to, but will there eventually, do you think, be a scenario where you can't even do that?

Like, you can't even access people's information.

Jordan: Yeah. I mean, in that scenario, like there's two culprits. One is a system like Apollo that is somehow gathering all of these cold leads for you, right?

Alyssa: Probably scraping the internet,

Jordan: Yeah I would equate that similar to like an Experian. In my world, Experian is a company that you can go and essentially do the same thing. I'm looking for a list of CEOs [00:12:00] within, you know, these industries within this blah, blah, blah, and they'll essentially give you a list of individuals minus like private individual information in there.

But ~So ~maybe they have the explicit consent because of other ways that we've engaged with their tools. They now pass it over to you. You're using it. It's the same as like purchasing an email list. where no one knows you when you hit their inbox, you're most likely going to get shut down just because of people being like, who the heck is this?

~Delete, unsubscribe. ~Like if you have horrible engagement rates, MailChimp and some of these others are going to be like, who are you? And why are you on, why are you trying to drag the rest of us down? Right?

I don't know what it's going to look like in this context because the difference between the United States and the European Union is they never advertised really like we have, like they.

really were a lot more careful and respectful. of consumer data and [00:13:00] I'll fully admit this because a lot of my career has been involved in like digital advertising and paid advertising like I love making a paid advertising strategy and it was so much fun to have a client, you know, I used to work in aviation and have a client say, well, I need to specifically reach pilots between this age and this age who are actively seeking a new job who maybe have these education credentials who potentially work at these competitive companies. Oh, I could go layers deep and you would essentially not really have like a one to one hit, but you would be able to get this pool of people that are fairly targeted. So it was awesome because it's like, wow, unlike TV and radio, where you're loosely targeting a demographic and maybe pilots are there, not trackable, you know, like a lot of waste.

Alyssa: Yeah.

Jordan: In that heyday, it was like, cool, we [00:14:00] are totally stalking you, and we are going to find you, and you're going to love us, and we're going to do business together. Well, now things are shifting more toward those traditional advertising models. Like, I've actually had several clients recently tell me, like, how disappointed they are in their advertising, and it's because they're in very niche industries or have a very niche type of product that even within an industry not everyone is going to qualify for.

Alyssa: Right.

Jordan: They can't advertise like that anymore. It is more of an awareness model. ~Loosely, I contextually want to target pilots. ~Contextually, anyone who might be looking for a job. These are now separate categories.

That's how that starts to unfold and that doesn't answer the your question necessarily, but I think the thing that I wonder is: Who is actually held responsible for that. Like, you're the one contacting the person based off of a cold list that you received They [00:15:00] don't know where you got that list. You can't, you already signed a contract saying that you're accepting responsibility from them, so it's not like you can go back to an Experian or Apollo or any of these to be like, you got me in trouble.

They're gonna be like, told you so. So what does that mean for you in these regulations? And I think what it means is that you don't blast people. You actually, ~The good story about it in this component is that it makes sales and marketers no longer lazy. Like you ~have to form relationships with people.

~And~

The impact that that kind of has is that we've been so used to being able to like target hundreds of people that fit our profile to fill our funnel fairly easily with inexpensive waste.

Well, that's shifting. It's now you need to spend more time on your customer experience, the relationships that you're building. And if you get it wrong, ~you're going to, it's actually, ~it's going to be a lot more expensive moving forward because

~Our~

massive amount of ~like ~impressions that we could reach are now getting smaller because of [00:16:00] that.

Well, the impressions are still there, but your buckets are going to get smaller. And so demand, I mean, supply and demand is at work there. A lot of things get really shifted here. It's not just like ~the, ~the nice thing is, ~is like ~in ~the times that like ~the timeframe that GDPR has existed, everybody was freaking out about the, ~like, ~am I going to get fined?

What's going to happen to me? I think one company has been fined, ~like maybe, ~or ~less than, ~less than a handful is what my guess would be. And so you have to be pretty awful to get dinged on it. That should not be the scary thing. What I think people need to understand about data privacy regulation is that ~this doesn't necessarily sh ~this shifts the way that you should be doing business.

We can't be lazy about it anymore. ~Build relationships, essentially. ~

Alyssa: So,

back to like the company level, for anyone listening.

~What, ~How would this affect how they're using the data that maybe they already have in their company or, you know, how they think about moving forward, especially if they're a very sales and marketing heavy company?

Jordan: Well, I think right now, because we don't have [00:17:00] this sweeping regulation, it's actually a perfect time to really kind of take audit of what you have. If you have, ~you know, if you already have like ~a bundle of customers, like you're probably good there. You're working together. They have a relationship with you.

They know you. In that case, it's more about talking to your team about, let's review ~our, ~our policies. How are we maintaining transparency with the data that we have on them? Have we been pretty clear with our current customers about how we plan on using their data? Like, are we clear that, hey, when we work together, we're adding you to our monthly newsletter and at any time you have the option to unsubscribe.

Like, just being transparent like that is a good enough step in that direction.

Alyssa: Mm.

Jordan: Now, if you're taking audit and you have a big leads list of cold, Emails, ~like the situation that you just brought up, you purchased a list, or you have a list, right?~ I would make sure that you have those segmented separately from the rest of your contacts.

And I would really be looking at how are you engaging them? Are you [00:18:00] doing this like blast to just try to see what sticks? Or are you trying to bring them along in a journey and doing it a little bit more comfortably like, Hi. My name is so and so, you know, like being a person with it. So really taking audit there is first.

If you are not clear if you have true opt in from a lot of your contacts, running a very simple campaign that just asks them to engage with you, ~like you could run an email To clean through all of your emails that you have, ~see who's still active, clean out those that are not active because they can become problems for you later on, right?~ But you could run a poll, like some sort of engagement campaign to get them to engage with you. ~That could be considered consent at that point and opt in at least in right now world.

Alyssa: Yeah.

Jordan: So really taking stock of like, whether or not you have that consent from your current customers now. And then as you're looking forward, how are you going to enact that consent model as a part of an onboarding with a lead so that you're already covered?

And the way that this plays [00:19:00] out, typically right now, is that email scenario. I downloaded a thing, you got my welcome email, I asked you to click to learn more, you click to learn more, you're now in. Sort of a deal, right? I think the other part is like data collection and this kind of goes hand in hand.

It's not about just trying to put every single person in a list. It's really considering what is it that, like, it's not just about like, okay, put all of your customers into a list and make sure that you have consent. It's also just being very careful and considerate about what data do we actually need from our customers.

Like, a lot of the reason why data privacy regulation came up is because we've been trying to get ~all of these, like, ~all of this information from customers over time, but then when hacking scenarios come up and, you know, all of that kind of stuff, then you're kind of left in this, I mean, you kind of did it to the customer at that point.

When you're asking for information, only [00:20:00] collect the things that you need to do business with that person. And then over time, Engage them in other ways so that you're learning about them. Once they have given you that consent and once they've engaged with you, you're golden. Just keep a great relationship with them and don't abuse the scenario, right?

Like don't abuse other people's data by blasting them or by,

~I~

~mean, ~never sell it. That's just rude, you know, and just be considerate with it. ~Like, and ~If you're not trying to abuse it. You're going to be fine. ~Mm-Hmm. ~Just have your checks and balances in place. ~Yeah. ~

Alyssa: Well, I feel like from what you've said, like, this isn't a scary time. It's a good time to get started and to just kind of take audit of what, you know, currently your processes are.

Where are you getting your information from? You know, ~we've, ~we've had a contractor that's helping us kind of clean through our, ~you know, years and ~years and years of contacts and helping us kind of scrub through that. And I feel like ~that's a very, ~that's been a very minimally [00:21:00] painful process. And so I feel like maybe it sounds scary, like starting to use like regulation and words that seem scary.

But really I feel like you've, ~Even ~put me at ease a little bit just thinking, okay, you know, we just need to make sure that people want to hear from us and that we're not abusing the power of what's available on the internet.

Jordan: Well, and I mean to that point, and you're in business development, I mean, would you rather be spending your time on cold leads or on contacts that very rarely or if ever engage with you, or would you rather be engaging your time and people that you know want to hear from you are developing a relationship?

I mean, you hit it perfectly, like the wording of it. And because it does disrupt, I mean the people that are mad about it are the advertising houses for the most part, right?

Alyssa: No longer is as

Jordan: oh, this is why social media companies like Facebook and X or whatever we're calling it now are thinking about subscription models because like if you [00:22:00] think about it, Facebook did not make the money that it has today until it started advertising.

Right. And I'm in marketing and I will tell you, advertising drove this. ~Because we were stalking people and so now ~Facebook can't make the billions of dollars off of ads anymore like it did like its revenue there is going down so it has to find

Alyssa: the model.

Jordan: gonna have to change the model ~and if they're ~and in a way they're kind of doing right by the consumers of okay we heard you you don't want ads in your feed in the density that we've been doing it. Heard that but you've got to pay us like five bucks a month or whatever they end up doing to have an ad free experience.

Alyssa: Ugh.

Jordan: That's what all the streaming services are doing too, ~you know?~

Alyssa: Yeah. Which, if, I feel like that's a good option, right? ~Like, if you're, ~sometimes I like having the ads.

Because they're so targeted, I'm like, and they know that I've been looking at certain things. So, sometimes I'm okay with it, and sometimes I'm like, Stop showing me this. So I feel like to give the option and I bet we'll see that continue more and more.

Jordan: I think the final point that I'll make on this is ~right now, and we've talked about this in a few episodes already, but ~right now is the perfect time to just really take stock of like what your customer data looks [00:23:00] like. How do you have it stored? Because even though these like hyper targeted options are no longer ~or ~and they're gradually going away with like third party cookies and things like that, the power that you have though is if you have really good customer relationships and they're engaging with you and you're getting these ~like ~data points on.

How they're engaging with you and when they're engaging with you and what they like and what they prefer That is targeting like you can use that to then go and Remark it to them like you own that data at that point and you are gonna be responsible with that data So if I wanted to reach out to my customers that I haven't heard from in the last, ~you know ~six months or so Then I could actually pull that list and run a campaign to target them correctly because ~I am ~I have their data I'm reaching out to them and I'm going to be a good steward about it, ~right?~

The other way that you can use it is and we've talked about the concept of like [00:24:00] identifying your most valuable Customers who are what are the segments that you really want to grow if you have that identified in Your data or in your customer data ~You ~You can pull that list and then say, I want to go find more people that are like them. ~And so you can use that as targeting. ~So right now the power is really in building great customer relationships, developing policies and procedures on how you're going to protect it and be a good steward of their customer data. And then the more that you have, the more engaged your customers are, you could actually run better advertising campaigns off of that.

Than what I would have done five years ago,

Alyssa: Yeah, yeah.

Jordan: and I think there's a lot of power in it.

Alyssa: And I will say if anyone is listening to this and needs help, we can also give some resources and referrals to some people that can help. I feel like Jordan has a lot of connections in this space and so, if you have any questions around this topic, or it's like, what did they just talk [00:25:00] about?

Or you want help, or whatever it may be, reach out to us. We'd love to, connect you to resources to help you get started in this journey. Our email is hello at insightlypodcast. com. Jordan, do you have any last words?

Jordan: I don't think so, just

pay attention. You might, ~you know, ~just want to put an alert on your browser for data privacy regulation so

Alyssa: that's a

Jordan: tune with where everything is moving.

But, like Alyssa said, ~if, if you are, ~if your fear has not subsided yet, reach out to us.

Alyssa: Yeah, we'd love to help. And any questions that we want to, we're trying to gather questions so that we can do a mailbag episode. So if you just want to say hi, we'd love to see who's listening to this.

Hello at insightlypodcast. com and we'll catch you on the next episode.

Jordan: Thank you!