Free Assessment: How does your sales & marketing measure up?

Get Started
Close

Free Assessment:

How does your sales & marketing measure up?
Take this free, 5-minute assessment and learn what you can start doing today to boost traffic, leads, and sales.
Get Started
Reporting & Performance  |   News

GDPR One Year Later: Where It Stands & Where It's Going

Jolie Higazi

By Jolie Higazi

May 27, 2019

GDPR One Year Later: Where It Stands & Where It's Going

If you’re like me, during early spring of 2018, you started hearing all this buzz around the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Though most of us barely knew anything about what it was about or what it entailed, it wasn’t something that could be simply brushed off when we started seeing HubSpot, Google, and Facebook talking about changes they were going to implement to stay in compliance.

After all, a single act of non-compliance could result in millions of dollars in fines and potential reputation hits.

We soon realized that even though the GDPR is intended to help protect the data privacy of people in 27 European countries, the necessity to do something for many of us US-based marketers was very real.

Recap: What Is the GDPR?

In short, GDPR is a measure put into effect to protect European contacts’ personal data. It’s a way the European Union took a firm and aggressive stance on protecting consumers’ privacy.

This means marketers needed to implement new measures of consent-requesting for any form of data collection, location sharing, or communication preferences. It basically put control of data back in the consumers’ hands.

For more information about how marketers needed to adapt to the GDPR, check out the talk Stephanie Baiocchi, IMPACT’s Director of Audience Engagement & Community, gave at IMPACT Live 2018.

What Effect Did the GDPR Have on Marketing Efforts?

In short, this meant we needed to put consent as the top priority when dealing with any form of marketing communications.

In fact, a single fine can range in the millions of dollars, as we’ve seen Google experience first-hand.

Now, after the dust has settled around these new data privacy safeguards, we’re living in a post-GDPR environment, as MarketingLand refers to it.

With more clear information about privacy and data sharing, there are a few notable trends we can gather since the GDPR took effect.

Lower Location Opt-Ins

With location sharing now required to be opt-in, privacy rights are on everyone’s mind.

According to a study from Airship, northern and western Europe have the lowest location opt-in rates of all the regions studied at 4.4% and 2.1%, respectively.

Wondering how North America has fared since GDPR?

Location opt-in rates in 2018 (pre-GDPR) were about 35.1%. Since GDPR, rates have fallen to 9.7%.

You may be surprised to hear, however, that there are a few outlier markets and locations for which opt-in locations have actually taken an upswing.

One of these is contacts located in Latin America and the Caribbean, which have seen an increase of 116%. (I suppose if you’re living the dream in the Bahamas, why not rub it in and share it with the rest of us!)

Aside from location-specific regions, a few industry verticals have also seen an uptick in year over year location opt-in rate.

Of these, the entertainment industry, as well as the food and drink industry, have seen increases of 43.1% and 161.5%, respectively.

Location Sharing Disparity Among Android and Ios Users

Another interesting trend is the difference in location sharing preferences among users of different mobile operating systems.

Android users tended to block location sharing more often than iOS users, which may be due to the fact that iOS provides the option to only share location while the specific app is being used.

The new Android Q update seems to address this issue, so it is likely we will see future location sharing numbers more comparable to iOS users.

GDPR: What’s Next?

The GDPR rollout presented a learning curve for many marketers, but it provided a great training ground to approach our marketing efforts with the agility needed to address similar policy enactments in the future.

“The best part about being a year into the of GDPR enactment is that the tools for managing data privacy have only improved and made the process easier,” Stephanie Baiocchi reflected.

“What used to be more complex is getting easier as more people are demanding the functionality. Looking ahead, I would encourage marketers to not get comfortable and think that just because they set up some things a year ago that everything is good to go. Remember, it's not about checking a legal box. It's about respecting the people who trust you with their personal data.”

With other protection policies in the works, such as the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) — which is gearing up to be the highest level of data privacy protection in the nation going into effect in January 2020 — it’s good that we’ve had our privacy warm up to tackle the coming changes that are much closer to home for the majority of us!

Free Assessment:

How does your sales & marketing measure up?
Take this free, 5-minute assessment and learn what you can start doing today to boost traffic, leads, and sales.

Related Articles

10 Marketing KPIs You Should Be Tracking

August 3, 2023
Carolyn Edgecomb Carolyn Edgecomb

Vanity Metrics Are The Most Misunderstood Numbers in Marketing

December 26, 2022
Ramona Sukhraj Ramona Sukhraj

What Marketers Need To Know About Switching to GA4 [Google Analytics 4]

July 30, 2022
John Becker John Becker

13 Valuable Marketing KPI Dashboards To Track Every Metric That Matters

July 14, 2022
Ramona Sukhraj Ramona Sukhraj

Get More Out of HubSpot Reporting With a Third-party Tool

July 9, 2022
John Becker John Becker

Databox vs. Geckoboard: Choosing the Right Data Platform for You

July 2, 2022
Ramona Sukhraj Ramona Sukhraj

Google Shares New Tools to Audit Website User Experience

August 12, 2021
Paul D. Grant Paul D. Grant

8 Best Digital Marketing Tools and Tech for Every Business (+ VIDEO)

March 31, 2021
John Becker John Becker

10 Google Analytics metrics you absolutely must track (updated)

March 29, 2021
Magdalena Day Magdalena Day

Google Analytics 4: Your business website analytics are now smarter

November 11, 2020
Vin Gaeta Vin Gaeta

Why a growth-driven design website will give you better traffic, leads, and sales

October 26, 2020
John Becker John Becker

Social Media KPIs: The 10 You Really Should Be Tracking and Monitoring

August 30, 2020
Ramona Sukhraj Ramona Sukhraj

Content ROI Examples: How to Nail Your Reporting Strategy with HubSpot

August 28, 2020
Liz Murphy Liz Murphy

How to Create a Powerful Monthly Content Marketing ROI Newsletter

August 7, 2020
Liz Murphy Liz Murphy

Google Analytics to offer 2 new probability metrics: purchase and churn

July 20, 2020
Vin Gaeta Vin Gaeta

Data privacy update: How the CCPA affects you and your paid advertising

July 15, 2020
Dan Baum Dan Baum

How attribution reporting helped iCIMS improve its Google Ads performance ft. Joel Maldonado of Path Interactive (Inbound Success, Ep. 150)

July 6, 2020
Kathleen Booth Kathleen Booth

What does Basecamp’s privacy-focused HEY email service mean for marketers? [IMPACT Toolbox June 2020]

June 25, 2020
Morgan VanDerLeest Morgan VanDerLeest

Google Ads now offers category reporting for your Search and Shopping ads

June 1, 2020
Vin Gaeta Vin Gaeta

How to Measure Content Marketing ROI, Celebrate Your Wins, and Keep Your Job

April 16, 2020
Jen Barrell Jen Barrell

Case study: Are you confident in the data behind your digital marketing strategy?

March 24, 2020
Dan Baum Dan Baum

Google makes it easier to hide content and check third-party reporting

February 4, 2020
Dylan Lepak Dylan Lepak

RIP HubSpot's 'links' tool: What you should use instead

January 8, 2020
Jessica Palmeri Jessica Palmeri

Why do regular backups of your website matter?

December 23, 2019
Daniel Escardo Daniel Escardo

What is Google Analytics? The pros, cons, and ugly missing link

December 17, 2019
Angela Bowman Angela Bowman