What keeps CMOs up at night in a data driven world?

by Chalva Tchkotoua on April 2, 2019

April 2, 2019

Author : Chalva Tchkotoua

Compliance, data-centric, privacy

In 2018 if you looked at the top 21 data breaches worldwide they impacted close to 1 billion customers according to Business Insider. Some of the biggest victims in 2018 included T-Mobile, Quora, Google, Orbitz and Marriott. Facebook dealt with a slew of major breaches and incidents that affected more than 100 million users on the popular social network. These kinds of incidents continue to frequently pop up in the news and are a key catalyst of what keeps CMOs up at night in a data-driven world.

In the 2018 Dentsu Aegis Network survey of 1,000 senior-level marketers and CMOs worldwide, about three in 10 respondents said that a data breach was the strategic risk that they’ll worry about the most over the next few years. The surveyed CMOs were much more concerned about the misuse of consumer data than they were about increasing competition or the dominance of new and emerging tech platforms.

Another key data security issue that worries chief marketers is the changing landscape of legislation. In May 2018, the EU’s General Protection Data Regulation (GDPR) became enforceable. Following GDPR, the California Consumer Privacy Act was signed into law in June and is set to take effect in 2020. US citizens and Congress members alike are becoming more comfortable with the idea of data regulation

But how can CMOs ensure they have the right protection mechanisms in place?

For CMOs, staying on the cutting edge of marketing technology and strategy in 2019 means becoming an expert in data governance and security. Beyond the possible impact to sales and revenue, a data breach can put customers at risk for hacking, defrauding, and financial difficulty if personally identifiable information (PII) collected by data management systems is exposed. A data breach is not only costly for a company, it diminishes the trust customers have in your brand and can irreparably tarnish the public’s view of a company. Yahoo, for example, will not only pay 50M$ in damages to customers, they also had to readjust the value of their digital services being sold to Verizon by more than 7% as a result of the breach.

It has become increasingly important for CMOs to advocate for customer privacy and to ensure data governance and security are adopted within an organization. If this sounds like a big undertaking, it’s because it can be. Some of the challenges faced by CMOs and their teams are:

Customer data is often stored on multiple platforms in different formats as part of your marketing stack, making it challenging to reconcile the data, ensure consistency, and implement uniform security protocol.
The use of outdated data management technologies that are not designed for meeting today’s data security standards makes compliance with new regulations such as GDPR more challenging.
Insufficient training or education across the organization means employees may not understand the importance of data governance nor have the knowledge to implement the necessary measures.

Be strategic about data collection

To properly manage and secure customer data, you need to consider how you’re collecting and storing the information. More data isn’t necessarily better. Not only can too much information lead to errors and confusion; it can also create unnecessary liability.

Clearly define the need of your marketing initiatives and the associated KPIs so that you only collect the information you need to reach the right audience with the most relevant content or offers and measure your results.

Integrate marketing technologies

Modern marketing means you’re likely using many platforms and services to implement your marketing strategies, whether that’s data warehouses, location data providers, email servers, CRMs, social media platforms, or mobile push providers, just to name a few.

Customer data from these disparate sources needs to be pulled together into one place and structured for it to be merged, analyzed, and utilized in a meaningful way.

While you can work with all of your service providers to try and match the nomenclatures and KPIs in your system, customer data platforms are able to collect your data regardless of source, so you can layer technology solutions aligned to your marketing stack with minimal disruptions.

Get internal alignment

Data governance affects the entire organization and requires the collaboration and alignment of various departments. For instance, how first-party customer data can be shared is probably very different from how a hashed anonymous user ID can be used – and every department in the company should have the same understanding on how the data can be leveraged.

It’s easier to ensure security compliance when you only have one database to maintain.A centralized customer data management platform (CDP), built with privacy by design, is the best way for companies to maintain data governance by encrypting data from end-to-end, controlling access to information, and tracking usage.

In addition, a CDP enables you to collect, transform, and share customer information while maintaining the quality of the data through the creation of a Single Customer View—this is the foundation for creating timely, effective content that resonates with all your customers. And just maybe this might allow you have one less sleepless night.

Come see how Protegrity can help you identify, locate and protect sensitive data enterprise wide, manage risk, achieve compliance and enable business analytics. Protegrity enables businesses to protect sensitive data everywhere at rest or in transit while maintaining the freedom to innovate with it anywhere across your organization.

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