The clock is ticking as your legal department has to decide on the next step for your business to be aligned across all departments.

For Retail, CRM and marketing – what does GDPR means? Today it is normal that we ask clients to accept extensive terms and conditions with a simple tick box in the bypassing. From a retail GDPR perspective this will not be allowed anymore.

First of all checkboxes cannot be prefilled.

Second of all for each type of different type of usage: storage, segmentation, analytics, marketing activities we need specific opt-in from the user for each type of activity. Also the terms and conditions need to be available to the customer when they sign up and also later so they have the opportunity to opt-out. The law will change so all type of client data usage is prohibited – and the retail GDPR legislation allows companies to receive permission for their client data activities.

Last day to contact your existing customers: May 28, 2018

The customer can update their information online, via their mobile, via paper or on a tablet in-store. Many retailers are worried about the drop off that big parts of their database will not be contactable after May 2018 due to those customers who haven’t updated their opt-ins by then.

From a retail GDPR perspective our recommendation is to maximise what the points of purchases (your stores) can do for you. Compared to pure e-commerce players the retailers can maximise their daily contact with customers in order to maximise the amount of opt-ins coming in. Imagine how many customers would not bother by a postal send out to their home asking them to go to a website to update their profile with new opt-ins.

In-store where you meet your customers you are able to explain the importance of these opt-ins so the customer can keep the benefits and communications from your business and a great touch point as a retailer in terms of GDPR.

Every improved conversion percentage helps

There will be multiple ways to update opt-ins. You can send something home to your customers, you can have tablets in-store, you can ask customers to fill out a paper in-store or you can do this via your website. By defining the most relevant methods for your environment can mean a big difference in opt-ins coming in. If your existing customer database is for example 1 000 000 customer then each percentage improved conversion will allow you to contact 10 000 more customers after May 2018. So it will be important for each retail GDPR project to define their strategy to confirm the best methods to do this.

Consequences

The extensive fines that follows GDPR has caught retailers and all other companies attention. Maximum 4% of your turnover might be an outcome for some retailer who don’t watch out for the GDPR legislation.

So time to update your members to a retail GDPR compliant opt-in. One member at a time.