Data privacy is front and center in every digital technology conversation today. CMOs, CPOs and CIOs are now the stewards of the brand-consumer relationship and the gatekeepers of the trust that can make or break it. Leading companies are using privacy requirements as an opportunity and a competitive differentiator in the experience provided to customers — rather than just a compliance obligation. And rather than thinking of the consent requirements as a hurdle, pioneering companies across industries are leveraging the new requirements as true indicators of brand engagement and loyalty, as well as customer satisfaction and trust. These days, it’s crucial to put customers front and center of your strategy. The more customers trust you and get value from what you deliver using their data, the more data they will entrust you with and the better your offerings will be. 

Website cookie banners, also known as a consent management platform (CMP), are table stakes in many countries that require businesses to be transparent and capturing consent on their digital properties. Leading businesses are taking their compliance programs to the next level with preference management and building trust across the entire consumer journey. By making it easy for consumers to make informed choices at every touchpoint, companies can stay ahead of customer needs and future-proof their data programs as requirements evolve. 

Investing in preference management allows you to turn privacy requirements into a real marketing advantage as it enables businesses to not only collect user consent and demonstrate compliance, but also promise relevant content and personalized communications at the right frequency and channel that that desire. 

Build customer loyalty with preference management

What is preference management? Preference management combines data privacy and customer choice to empower users to manage brand communications. Other benefits include organizational compliance, transparency, and increased consumer trust.  

Through preference management, businesses are able to collect consent, preferences and first-party data from collection points and preference centers, centralize data in a single source of truth, and activate data to drive personalization, segmentation, and better campaigns. 

Preference management empowers your audience to make choices about marketing communications. These choices offer invaluable insight that marketers can leverage to strategize marketing communications. Ultimately, this can help reduce unsubscribes and opt-outs by increasing consumer choice and informing marketing strategy.  

By analyzing customer preferences for channels, topics, and frequency, marketers can make more strategic decisions around campaign focus, resources, and execution.  

Customer experience should be top of mind when developing these strategies. It’s also important to incorporate consent management into a comprehensive marketing strategy. Finally, marketers should ensure that data collected, and choices made by customers are activated throughout different systems used for marketing, campaigns, and communications. By doing so they ensure customer choices are honored and data can be leveraged across your organization.

The benefits of backend downstream integrations and consent proof

Employing a consent and preference management platform that integrates with other systems allows your marketing team to operate with a privacy-first approach to personalization and leads to better segmentation, addressability and brand loyalty while prioritizing customer privacy and responsible data ownership. Using a consent and preference management platform enables your team to use one platform that captures, stores and syncs consent, preferences and first-party data across hundreds of MarTech tools to deliver personalized campaigns that don’t jeopardize customer privacy.  

Valid consent addresses the requirement for proof of consent across multiple regulations. Obtaining valid proof of consent is key in enabling your organization to demonstrate compliance and use marketing data ethically. It also allows you to provide tangible evidence to your customer base when necessary. Many organizations today have consent stored as a simple yes or no flag with a timestamp in their CRM or marketing automation tool, which is not considered fully compliant. Multiple regulations provide guidance on keeping valid proof of consent, but you will need to at the very least track the following: 

• Who consented and when they consented 
• What they were told at the time of consent 
• How they consented under which policy/T&C

Expected outcomes when expanding from a CMP to Preference Management

Investing in consent and preference management has the potential to enhance marketing and activities with tangible benefits. 

• Empowered customers: Brands that equip audiences with choices for data and communications are more likely to be seen as trustworthy and valuable.
• Reduced opt outs: Providing opt-down choices helps users make informed choices and reduces unsubscribes and opt outs.
• Increased ROI: Marketers who have activated consent and preference management estimate a 40X return on their investment.
• Compliance: Many governing bodies require data access, transparency and valid proof of consent. Preference management enhances an organization’s implementation of these requirements. 
• Future-proofing: As the privacy and tech landscape continues to evolve, operating proactively and building trust with customers by collecting zero-and-first party data will help protect businesses over the long term. 

How OneTrust can help

OneTrust PreferenceChoice provides the toolset to streamline privacy and marketing activities. By providing transparency and choice to consumers, businesses can build mutually-beneficial relationships with customers and enhance compliance with global privacy requirements.  

OneTrust PreferenceChoice automates privacy compliance for marketing, publishing, and advertising activities by: 

• Collecting consent, preference, and first-party data.
• Centralizing customer consents for proof of compliance.
• Maintaining compliance with global regulations and frameworks.

A privacy-first approach across digital properties and channels can increase ROI — all while adhering to global privacy requirements from GDPR, CCPA, and more. 

OneTrust PreferenceChoice is trusted by more than 10,000 brands worldwide. Get started today by requesting a free demo.

Follow OneTrust on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube for the latest on consent management.