Expert Opinion by Michaël Froment
Director and Co-founder

From Europe to America and Asia, the management of personal data is the object of much attention. At the forefront of the movement, Europe has laid the foundations of consent, prior to any collection and use of personal information, with the RGPD. We are only at the beginning of the story, but make no mistake: users will learn quickly and link the quality of consent management to the trust they can give - or not - to a brand. The subject of consent, sometimes delegated to the legal, becomes eminently marketing.

It is no longer a matter of collecting consent, but also of scripting it, testing it, measuring it... Consent is no longer just a compliance issue, but a marketing issue in its own right. A discipline with its own best practices and tools - the Consent Management Platform (CMP), as TrustCommander.

If the RGPD has opened a strong sequence of awareness to the issue of personal data, the story is far from being closed. On the contrary, many developments are expected, and not only in Europe. Last but not least, new technical constraints will contribute to put the issue of consent back on the agenda of marketing meetings.

What can we learn from the new regulatory frameworks and technical constraints that are multiplying?

For most organizations, the subject of online consent collection is still a wide open issue. Compliance with the new recommendations of the CNIL by July 2020 will require a serious rethink of the collection methods.

The technical constraints that limit the field of action of cookies will lead to investigate, in the wake of consent, how to maintain a flow of data of sufficient quality to work.

More generally, the idea is that consent management is no longer a subject that marketing can simply delegate to legal or technical matters, but a pillar in its own right of the marketing strategy.

What strategies for marketers?

The subject of consent is therefore on the agenda of marketing managers for a long time to come. How to deal with it? While some are tempted by circumvention tactics, others are thinking more strategically.

WORKING ON CONSENT FORMULATION or how to renew the collaboration between marketing and legal.

Whether or not login is chosen, a new collaboration between marketing and legal teams is desirable. At present, the formulation of consent has too often been outsourced to the legal team. Probably with the idea that, just like the general terms and conditions of sale, no one will have much fun reading these few lines. This attitude is understandable at a time when consent rates are close to 90% when organizations use "soft consent". But the situation will have changed by July 2020: a positive action from the Internet user will be required. And to motivate it, a strictly legal text will not be enough. The contract that the collection of consents represents must now be worked on jointly between legal and marketing in order to win over audiences.

Objective: to formulate the value of this consent and the brand's commitments in the most legible way possible. It's up to everyone to find their own formula...

MOVING FROM CONSENT MANAGEMENT TO PREFERENCE MANAGEMENT or how to make consent a user experience.

Since consent is no longer a matter of asking the user to nod in front of a pre-populated screen, it makes sense to treat this collection as an integral part of the user experience. And to use this moment not only to collect consent, but also to offer visitors the possibility to determine all their preferences. As you can see from these examples, preference management will be even more exhaustive and "useful" if the user is logged in. In all cases, the path is clear: the "privacy center" (this page where the user visualizes his consents) becomes a "preferences center". This is a place where each visitor has a global view of the points of contact and the information he agrees or not to share. A place where they do not go by default, but to regulate their relationship with the brand.

SCENARIZING CONSENT or how to boost collaboration between marketing and martech.

Since "soft consent" is a thing of the past, every organization must prepare for a much more explicit collection of consent. And, also, for a significant drop in consent rates. To what extent? Nearly 32% of the sites studied stick to a "super soft" consent (validation of consent at the scroll or first click on an element) and 31% to a "soft" consent (validation at the second page visited). As a result, consent rates in sectors such as "Fashion & Retail" or "Travel" vary between 66% and 91%! These rates are in stark contrast to those of financial players, who apply a "strict consent" (explicit click on an accept button), recording an average consent rate of... 29%*. This gives an idea of what site publishers can expect with the end of "soft consent". With consents divided by 2 or 3, the scripting of consent becomes a subject. No taboo question. It is likely that, in practice, the collection and completion of consent will gradually become part of a logic similar to that of marketing automation, with conditioned scenarios and testing. A discipline in its own right? In any case, it is a field in which each organization will have to cultivate its experience.

SUPERVISING CONSENT or how to equip yourself to act.

Because it is part of the user experience, because it determines the ability to acquire customer knowledge and activate digital levers, the collection of consents requires precise monitoring with dedicated KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). Valuable data to provide the means for continuous improvement of consent and to care for this contract of trust with its audience.

Since consent is there and will be there for a long time, attempts to circumvent it are doomed to failure. It is in the best interest of brands to work on consent as a moment in the user experience. A moment that, to be successful, requires close collaboration between legal, technical and marketing teams.

* Source: Privacy Barometer Commanders Act

All of these points in more detail and the answers in the White Paper Commanders Act " Consent Management: Set the pace for your marketing.