The March Eloqua User Group walked members through the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which comes into effect next month on the 25th May. This was the culmination of a few weeks for research and monitoring the GDPR communications we have been exposed to from our broader network.
The key takeaway from my research was this: Whilst the GDPR may not primarily apply directly to your organisation today, I believe it provides some insights into how data protection laws and consumer expectations are changing, and where the bar is now set in terms of best practice.
We ran a few polls during our webinar, which whilst far from any statistically representative sample, we felt were worth sharing:
Poll 1: What is your current knowledge level on the GDPR?
37% of respondents said that was the first contact with the GDPR and a further 32% said their knowledge was basic. Now given, this may be why they wanted to attend the webinar and it is not necessarily an urgent topic for Australian based companies without European contacts, however, we still felt this was lower than expected.
For the user group, our webinar focused how Eloqua would help marketers with compliance. Just before we launched into 10 ways that Eloqua could help, we asked our users whether they believed Eloqua would help.
Poll 2: To what extent do you think Eloqua will help you?
Interestingly, 33% already believed that Eloqua would help them with GDPR compliance (or raising their bar). On the other hand, 38% were unsure, so there is still plenty of need for more practical education.
Our final poll, right at the end of the webinar, we asked our user group about readiness.
Poll 3: How ready are you now for GDPR?
Given that we are now less than a month away from the date the GDPR comes into effect, this poll was probably the most revealing. 20% of respondents felt that it did not apply to them, so that takes the urgency out of the equation for them. 10% were ready and had clearly been planning for the GDPR.
55% of respondents were still learning but were on their way to meeting the GDPR standards. Given that the GDPR is a legal evolution, this makes sense, but time is running short if they have EU offices or EU based contacts. Finally, there were 15% of Eloqua users that needed more help!
So, the real question here is – how ready is your own organisation, and specifically marketing, for GDPR? Given the questions above, where would you place yourselves?
Marketing Cube has published a white paper – GDPR in a Nutshell – Dispelling the myths & outlining the opportunity for Oracle Marketing Cloud users.
Do you have additional GDPR questions, or perhaps you’re not an Eloqua customer?
At 11:00am AEST, Wednesday 2nd May, Marketing Cube will be presenting a further webinar designed for a broader non-Eloqua audience on the GDPR, which will focus on final preparations and the opportunity that this massive change presents to the digital marketing community.
We hope you can join us.
Topic: A non-EU view into the GDPR for marketers
Date: The webinar was held on Wednesday 2nd May, 2018
Duration: 60 minutes
