Personal data profusely helps businesses and will continue to help them for the foreseeable future online.
It provides them with a more in-depth understanding of their target audience, and if it is collected, then it can improve a customer database that a business can communicate to and can improve marketing strategies by giving them the opportunity to personalize products, order confirmations, and their regular communications.
Although this may seem like the ultimate problem solver to your engagement and marketing issues, there also comes a great and precise responsibility.
Big data is taking over the business world. It is a blend of the operations dedicated to collecting data, the tools that are used in the collection as well as the management of the big data.
It was initially created to understand customer habits and preferences, but it can be used to help anticipate how customers could react to certain marketing tactics or to the innovation of new products and services.
The General Data Protection Regulation
The General Data Protection Regulation (or otherwise known as GDPR) are guidelines for businesses to follow when it comes to data collection and protection. The regulations were created in 2018 to provide better protection and stronger rights to customers and their data. The European Union made legislation to regulate how businesses collected, processed, and stored individuals’ personal data.
What Kind Of Rights Do Customers Have Over Their Data
When it comes to personal data, customers have basic rights that they can ask a business to do. Click here to find out what you can do and how big data can affect your life.
- The right to access — they can request access to their personal data and asked how it will be used.
- The right to be forgotten — if a customer is no longer a customer, they reserve the right to ask to have their information forgotten
- The right to data portability — Customers have the right to move their data from one provider to another
- The right to be informed — customers must be told when their data is collected. Data should be gathered with explicit consent and given freely by the customers.
- The right to have information corrected — customers can update any of their information
- The right to restrict processing — customers can request their information does not get processed but can still be held within the business’ database.
- The right to object — customers can stop the use of their data being used and included in anything marketing related.
- The right to be notified — if there is an issue with a customer’s data, such as a data breach, they have the right to be informed within 72 hours.
Even though the data is being stored within the business’ digital infrastructure, the customer basically has complete control over how their data is stored, if they want it stored at all, and how the business can process it.
What You Should Know About Your Customer’s Personal Data & Your Company
The data collected from your customers can be categorized in four ways; you can collect personal, engagement, behavioral and attitudinal data that can get collected by directly asking, tracking, or by partnering with other parties to share the data.
The collection of different data categories can collate the sex, age, interests and even employment status of people. This should be able to help guide and predict how a segmentation of the target audience may respond to different marketing and operations strategies.
It is important to determine what data is valid for the business to keep and what is not. It is imperative to have a purpose behind the data that is being collected; without a motive, it is just hoarding. Keep track of where data is coming from and where it is to be stored. This may not be part of the GDPR guidelines, but it will help with a business’ CRM (Customer Relationship Management).
How Does Big Data Help Businesses Make Better Decisions
A business can be more informed when making decisions when it comes to marketing strategies targeting new and existing customers; through analyzed collated data, a business can make informed decisions and not guesses.
Based upon a database of customers, a marketing strategy targeted to the most popular demographic with the goal of solving their top problem or need could be the optimal way to generate leads and sales as well as improve the relationship between the customer and the brand.
Additionally, big data can aid in determining goal identification, and analyzing the data can assist a business see trends in their customers’ buying habits and help twist it from just data into profit and revenue.
The Future For Data Is Bright
The prediction for big data in the future is immense. The volume of data will increase and potentially move to the cloud.
Like all other technologies, databases that hold the personal data of customers will continue to evolve and eventually may even be able to anticipate their customers’ moves, making marketing strategies practically foolproof.
Augmented Analytics looks to be the future trend analyzing big data. It is set to involve artificial intelligence, where it is the computer’s job to process and analyze the data. Using this method could speed up the data processing system to a fraction of current techniques.
All In All
Conclusively, personal data that is collected responsibly following the GDPR guidelines can give a business a competitive advantage. By understanding the customers’ rights to their data, knowing what data is useful for a marketing strategy, and allowing the data trends to help a business make better decisions, big data can positively impact a business.
Businesses will gain a more in-depth understanding of their target audience and allow for better communication with them.
The future of data is moving in a larger and more developed way, meaning a business will need to stay up to date with the data journey in order to utilize it to an advantage.
As previously mentioned, big data is taking over the business world, so it is best to keep up with it.
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