Once again it seems that the third sector is paving the way for organisations preparing for GDPR.

Over the past few months I have been speaking to numerous organisations to begin work on preparing for GDPR and it never ceases to amaze me, how many think they have plenty of time and don’t need to worry till the New Year. Have a read of this article in Charity Digital News, it discusses this area and applies to all organisations.

It is only once an organisation starts looking at their data for whatever project, that they realise how much time it takes to cleanse and sort data and that is without the need to contact all records to get them to opt into further communications.

The other element that is preventing these organisations preparing their databases is fear, the fear that if they ask all their database if they can contact them in the future, the majority will not reply and in so doing, will reduce the size of their database, in some cases by up to 90%.

But what you need to understand is that if a contact does not reply and opt in to further contact then they probably would not have been a useful contact and in the case of charities would not have been a useful potential supporter. The real outcome will be that the return on investment for data driven marketing should increase, whilst you might only be targeting 10% of the previous total the returns per contact will be significantly higher.

The overall message is don’t wait, start preparing for GDPR now, it will take longer than you think. And don’t worry about reducing the size of your database, it is better to have 1000 engaged people that 20,000 of which 99% are not engaged.

To find out more about what we do with our clients on GDPR get in touch.