Two-thirds of marketers report being less able to personalise marketing to individuals, switching instead to segmentation, since the introduction of GDPR.
According to research by credit reporting agency TransUnion, eight out of 10 marketers (78%) agreed that being able to segment or understand their existing customer base is more important now GDPR is in effect.
Marketers also listed restricted access to consumer data (38%), reliance on customer consent going forward (37%), reduced pool of prospects to target (26%) and reduced insight on existing customer database (25%) as some of their post-GDPR hurdles.
Ryan Kemp, business development director at TransUnion said: “The GDPR has restricted marketers’ abilities to micro-target customers and that’s why we’ve seen a huge rise in the use of widely accessible data that doesn’t infringe on a person’s privacy, but can give a better understanding of who you’re marketing to.”
Marketers embrace ‘pull’ tactics
The study, which surveyed 100 marketing decision-makers, found nearly two-thirds (63%) are now using widely accessible data such as firmographics, demographics or geodemographics as their primary form of segmentation, while 62% said they felt confident they can segment their customer database more effectively.
Additionally, the research revealed marketers are adapting to a blended approach of push and pull tactics. For ‘push’ tactics, almost half (46%) of businesses are increasing their focus on digital advertising, while the same number are increasing their focus on direct mail. Meanwhile, the ‘pull’ tactics saw the biggest increase in focus as a result of the tighter data handling guidelines, including content marketing (53%), paid social (51%) and online PR (50%).
