The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into force next May and its implementation could upend retailers’ marketing strategies.

Customers who respond to personalised marketing automatically create data, usually collected and stored in content management and customer relationship management systems.

Central to this is an integrated single customer view. So how will the arrival of the GDPR actually impact retailers?

The two issues most likely to cause major problems are the right to be forgotten and rights to automated decision making and profiling.

Compliance concerns

Retailers need to assess their ability to comply with the GDPR – and the key to compliance is traceability and transparency.

“If 100 or 1,000 or 10,000 customers asked you to stop using a specific piece of their data for a specific profiling purpose, could you comply?”

This new legislation is a big deal. If 100 or 1,000 or 10,000 customers asked you to stop using a specific piece of their data for a specific profiling purpose, could you comply?

Could you prove that you have their consent to use that data for each specific purpose?

Would you know from where that data came?

Could you show how it was processed and what automated inferences (ie algorithms) were applied?

Would you know how that processing affected their single customer view record?

Could you unpick that trail, reprocessing and regenerating a compliant single customer view that still supports your marketing campaigns?

Transparent and traceable

With fines of up to 4% gross revenue for non-compliance, the GDPR is not to be taken lightly.

The Information Commissioner’s Office might just be looking for a high-profile scalp.

“Retailers … that protect their businesses by generating a transparent and traceable single customer view will be in a much better position”

There are no easy answers here, but one thing is certain; retailers that replace black boxes used in customer data processing and protect their business by generating a transparent and traceable single customer view will be in a much better position.

They will be able to continue to grow sales through marketing automation, safe in the knowledge that they are compliant – definite advantage over those retailers which choose to deal with the GDPR later.