Are organisations obsessing about the operational necessities required by GDPR and missing out on a fantastic opportunity to engage with customers and prospects?
Dave Newick, Managing Director of Document Plus which has created Arken – a document automation software solution used by private client solicitors, will writers and other professional advisers – presented at the Today’s Wills and Probate roundtable event in Manchester last week.
He said: “Clearly, complying with the upcoming new General Data Protection Regulations is extremely important for legal advisers. By virtue of the work that they do it’s inevitable that nearly every meeting, phone call or document produced will involve personal information and advisers have a responsibility to ensure the security of that data.
“Your clients should be able to take compliance as a given. Arken helps customers with the compliance aspects of their work but – perhaps more interestingly – we also want to help our customers engage with their clients at the right time and for the right reason; generating more inbound enquiries and deeper, longer-lasting and more profitable relationships with customers.”
Dave’s presentation focused on two critical factors in achieving this – quality of data; and content development and delivery.
“We want to give our customers a platform which they can use to build a lifelong relationship with their customers,” he said. “GDPR represents a great opportunity to reflect on something that’s always been critical to building a sustainable profitable business – the quality of relationships with clients and prospects.
“In an environment where all of us are being invited to rethink our marketing preferences, we all need to give our customers a very good reason to want to stay connected with us. Part of that is offering information, products and services which deliver value to clients over their lifetime and which meet their critical needs. If we do this then customers will be willing to share their data with us and over time this can be built in to long lasting relationships built on trust.”
This is even more important where an organisation is relying on consent as the lawful basis for processing information. Consent is hard won and requires effort to obtain and keep. Dave Newick said: “A content plan that covers the coming months so that the customer regularly receives interesting, useful and engaging content is critical. Without this, your customers have no need to keep speaking to you – and in time might withdraw their consent to receive marketing communications or request that you erase their data and desist your communications.”
Having said that, even the best content is of limited value if the mailing lists being used are of poor quality. GDPR has focused minds on the importance of having good quality mailing lists. After all, why waste limited resources and time on sending messages to someone who is not interested, has never engaged previously and is unlikely to buy from you in the future?
“This is a good opportunity to really clean up your database,” advises Dave. “We can then help you to segment different customer groups and tailor content and messaging to each group. The result will be an increased level of engagement and interaction with customers.
“One of our jobs as our customers’ preferred software solutions provider is to make the processes involved as simple and efficient as possible. However, we also want to help our clients generate better quality and more frequent engagement with their customers which over time will deliver additional revenue.
“As a global business, we’re able to bring experiences from across the world to provide our clients with insights which will help them to engage with their client base.”
For more information contact Documents Plus on 01732 867 792 or email at info@arken.legal
https://arken.legal/insights/gdpr-what-is-means-for-a-will-makers-data
This article was submitted to be published by Arken as part of their advertising agreement with Today’s Wills and Probate. The views expressed in this article are those of the submitter and not those of Today’s Wills and Probate.
