Brand Friendly Marketer’s Guide to Brand Friendly Privacy Software

Hello, fellow marketer! As you know, data privacy regulations can feel like a bit of a downer. After all, 73% of us marketers reckon that privacy concerns are going to make our data-driven, personalized marketing strategies a bit more complicated. But hey, we’re marketers – we love a good challenge, right?

So, here’s the reality: compliance with data privacy regulations is a must, especially if your company is looking to attract customers from the hundreds of places in the world with active data privacy regulations. But don’t worry, we’ve got your back. Here are some key questions you should ask about your privacy software.

Global Cookie Consent Management

We marketers live and breathe numbers, right? The number of people visiting your website, the number of people converting on your website, new and recurring visitors, form submissions, referral sources, page views, visits by demographic, visits by persona, visits by industry — you name it, we track it.

But here’s the kicker: asking visitors for consent to track these metrics is not only necessary for compliance with data privacy regulations, but it also reduces the size of your data set. So, it’s super important to make sure your privacy solution manages cookie consent banners globally.

Your vendor should serve up compliant banners for each jurisdiction, ensuring users only interact with the relevant banner that they’re familiar with. This feature alone will go a long way toward minimizing the impact that asking for consent has on your analytics.

Interaction with Your Tag Management System

If you’re using tracking cookies, then you’re using tags. And if you’re using tags, you’re probably using a tag management system, like Google Tag Manager (GTM).

Your privacy software needs to play nice with GTM or your alternative tag management system. As users accept or decline analytics, marketing, and/or personalization cookies, your privacy software needs to interact with those GTM triggers to signal whether the tag should fire or not.

But here’s the thing: integrating a privacy software solution with GTM can be a bit of a headache, especially when you consider that the average enterprise website has anywhere between 50 and 150 third-party tags.

But don’t worry, there’s a workaround. Some privacy software solutions, like PieEye, block cookies client-side, in the users’ browser. This means they don’t need to interact with GTM at all, making the whole process a lot smoother.

Impact on Your Website’s Load Speed

We all know that in the world of digital marketing, every second counts. A few extra seconds of delay can be very noticeable to your visitors. In fact, one study found that a two-second increase in load speed results in a 103% increase in bounce rate. Yikes!

During the evaluation process, you can ask the vendor representative what impact their solution typically has on Google Lighthouse scores.

DSAR Automation

While cookie consent management gets all the attention, there’s more to data privacy regulation compliance. You also need to provide users with a means of making a DSAR, or data subject access request. Under a DSAR, a user may request to see what data your organization has on them, request a correction, ask for that data to be deleted, and more.

You’ll want to ensure your data privacy software features an automated and repeatable DSAR process so you can comply and do your actual job.

Conclusion

Data privacy software is about more than just cookie consent; it’s about holistic compliance. Make sure the solution you evaluate also makes complying with other aspects of data privacy regulation (like DSARs) easy and painless.