Majority of Companies Still Don’t Realize True Impact Customer Consent Has on their Bottom Line

PossibleNOW, the leading provider of enterprise consent and preference management solutions, announced new results of a survey on customer communications consent, which shows many companies still are not properly implementing consent strategies for their organizations and it is costing them customers and lost revenue.

Sixty-one percent of companies surveyed said they are either not actively collecting customer consent data, or they aren’t sure.

Customer consent is extraordinarily critical to the success of any digital marketing initiative and having the right consent strategy in place can save a business significant amounts of customers from walking out of their virtual storefront and opting out of communications. In fact, consent tools, such as opt-down pages, save between 60%-90% of all global unsubscribe requests. Customers will stay engaged and subscribed if they can specify what company communications are important to them.

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GDPR consent regulations were passed earlier this year, and while the regulations directly impact all customers that are European Union natural persons, many industry observers believe it is only a matter of time before similar regulations are imposed for consumers in North America and beyond. The survey found that 25% of respondents say they are not collecting consent because they are waiting to see how the laws are enforced, another 24% said they don’t know enough about consent laws, and 14% said that they do not believe they will be fined.

This is clearly affecting customers. Of those respondents that said they do not offer a consent management platform, nearly a quarter said as many as 50% of their customer base is frustrated because they can’t properly manage their consent choices.

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Even for many companies offering consent platforms, their systems are not robust enough to truly execute consent properly. Twenty-six percent said they are still in the early phases of their consent roll-out, and another 24% are only in the planning phases – meaning they have an intention to offer, but still aren’t doing so. In fact, only 25% said their consent management solution allows them to share data across all departments and divisions; and another 25% said they can maintain historical records for each customer, a critical component to any truly compliant consent system. This means that even though one division receives consent preferences from customers, another division also marketing to the customer base doesn’t know their consent choices.

“Only by embracing a culture of thoughtful, progressive relationship-building through proper consent collection strategies will enterprises be able to engage in meaningful dialogue that builds trust with customers and is in alignment with GDPR initiatives,” said Eric Tejeda, Marketing Director at PossibleNOW. “Not all consent management platforms are built sufficiently, and consent collection without commensurate internal process and policy will simply result in delayed exposure to regulatory risk as consent expires, preferences changes and most likely lost business as a result of customers growing frustrated with brand communications they do not wish to receive.”

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