GDPR compliance is the adherence to the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation, the European Union's law governing data privacy and security. This means any organization that processes the personal data of EU residents must meet its legal obligations for how that data is collected, handled, and protected. The regulation outlines key principles, including lawfulness, data minimization, and accountability, that must be at the core of any data processing activity.
The GDPR is founded on seven key principles for processing personal data. These mandate that data handling must be lawful, fair, and transparent. Organizations must also limit collection to specific purposes and only gather data that is strictly necessary, a concept known as data minimization.
Furthermore, data must be kept accurate and stored only as long as needed. The principles of integrity and confidentiality demand robust security measures. Finally, accountability requires organizations to prove their compliance with these regulations.
This is how you can begin your journey toward compliance.
While often discussed together, these two legal frameworks have distinct scopes and applications.
Navigating GDPR compliance presents several significant hurdles for organizations of all sizes.
Achieving GDPR compliance offers significant advantages beyond just avoiding fines. It enhances an organization's reputation and improves data management practices, fostering a culture of privacy that resonates with modern consumers.
Does GDPR apply to B2B marketing?
Yes, it does. Business contact information, such as names and email addresses, is considered personal data under GDPR. Companies must have a lawful basis, like legitimate interest, to process this data for marketing purposes.
What are the penalties for non-compliance?
Penalties can be substantial, reaching up to €20 million or 4% of a company's annual global turnover, whichever is higher. The severity of the fine depends on the specific nature of the violation.
Is consent always required to process personal data?
No. While consent is one legal basis, data can also be processed if it's necessary for a contract, a legal obligation, or based on the legitimate interests of the organization, among other reasons.
Economic Order Quantity (EOQ) is the ideal order quantity a company should purchase to minimize its total inventory-related costs.
Social selling is the art of using social media to find, connect with, build relationships with, and nurture sales prospects.
Enrichment is the process of adding third-party data to your existing customer profiles to get a more complete picture of your leads.
The buying process is the journey a customer takes from first realizing a need to making a final purchase decision and evaluating it afterward.
Sales prospecting is the process of identifying potential customers, or prospects, and initiating contact to convert them into paying customers.
Upselling is a sales tactic encouraging customers to purchase a higher-end version of a product or related add-ons to boost revenue.
Learn about branded keywords, including identifying your branded keywords, & strategies for optimizing branded keywords.
Account-Based Sales (ABS) is a focused B2B strategy where sales and marketing teams treat high-value accounts as individual markets of one.
Personalization is the practice of using data to tailor products, services, or content to an individual's specific needs and preferences.
DevOps is a culture and set of practices that merges software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops) to shorten development cycles.
Click-through rate (CTR) is a metric that measures the percentage of people who click on a specific link, ad, or call-to-action.
XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a markup language for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable.
Revenue Operations KPIs are quantifiable metrics that track the performance, efficiency, and health of a company's revenue-generating engine.
De-duping, or data deduplication, is the process of eliminating duplicate copies of data within a dataset to improve accuracy and save space.
Customer Success is a business strategy focused on proactively helping customers achieve their goals with your product or service.
A small to medium-sized business (SMB) is a company whose employee count and annual revenue fall below certain industry-specific thresholds.
A Search Engine Results Page (SERP) is the page displayed by a search engine after a user enters a query, listing results ranked by relevance.
Trigger marketing uses customer actions or events to automatically send highly relevant, personalized messages at the perfect moment.
Page views count the total number of times a page on your website is loaded. This metric is a key indicator of your site's overall traffic.
MOFU, or Middle of the Funnel, is the crucial evaluation stage in the buyer's journey where leads compare solutions to their known problem.
User interaction is any action a user takes within a digital interface, like clicking a button, scrolling a page, or filling out a form.
Video email involves embedding a short video directly into an email. This lets recipients watch your message without leaving their inbox.
Consumer Relationship Management (CRM) is a strategy for managing all of a company's relationships and interactions with its customers.
Revenue Operations (RevOps) is a business function that aligns a company's sales, marketing, and customer service teams to drive predictable revenue.
Account-Based Selling is a B2B strategy where sales and marketing treat high-value accounts as markets of one, using personalized outreach.
Sales prospecting software automates the process of finding, contacting, and tracking potential customers to help sales teams build their pipeline.
Sales intelligence is technology that gathers and analyzes data to help salespeople find and understand prospects and existing clients.
Learn about batch processing, including benefits of batch processing, best practices for implementation, & common use cases.
A Request for Information (RFI) is a formal process for gathering information from potential suppliers before issuing a more detailed proposal.
Precision targeting is a marketing strategy that uses data to identify and reach a highly specific audience most likely to convert.
Digital advertising is the practice of delivering promotional content to users through various online and digital channels like social media or search engines.
A cloud-based CRM is a customer relationship management tool hosted online, letting teams access and manage customer data from anywhere.
Customer Data Management (CDM) is the process of collecting, organizing, and analyzing customer data to create a unified view of your audience.
Consultative selling is an approach where salespeople act as expert advisors, diagnosing customer needs to provide the most suitable solutions.
Website visitor tracking collects and analyzes data on user behavior to understand their journey and improve the overall user experience.
A canary release is a deployment strategy where new software is rolled out to a small user group first, minimizing risk before a full release.
Learn about bad leads, including identifying bad leads, warning signs of bad leads, impact of bad leads on sales, & strategies to minimize bad leads.
Persona-based marketing uses fictional customer profiles, or personas, to create targeted messaging for specific audience segments.
Predictive analytics uses historical data, statistical algorithms, and machine learning to identify the likelihood of future outcomes.
Tokenization is the process of breaking down text into smaller units called tokens, such as words or characters, for AI to process.
An API (Application Programming Interface) is a software intermediary that allows two applications to talk to each other and exchange information.
Sales forecast accuracy is a key metric that compares your predicted sales revenue against the actual sales revenue you ultimately achieve.
Total Audience Measurement (TAM) provides a holistic view of content consumption, tracking viewership across all platforms and devices.
Real-time data is information processed and made available almost instantaneously, enabling immediate analysis and decision-making.
Contract management is the process of creating, executing, and analyzing contracts to maximize performance and minimize financial risk.
A System of Record (SoR) is the authoritative data source for a specific type of data. It acts as the single source of truth for an organization.
Outbound leads are potential customers a business proactively contacts through outreach like cold calls, emails, or social media.
Cold emailing is sending unsolicited emails to potential customers you haven't contacted before, aiming to start a business conversation.
An Account Development Representative (ADR) identifies and qualifies new business opportunities, creating a pipeline for account executives.
Learn about B2B marketing KPIs, including identifying key B2B marketing KPIs, setting achievable KPI targets, B2B vs B2C marketing KPIs: understanding the differences.
Customer journey mapping is the process of creating a visual story of your customers' interactions with your brand across all touchpoints.
Deal closing is the final step in a sales cycle. It's when a prospect signs a contract and officially converts into a paying customer.
Compliance testing ensures a product or system adheres to specific regulations, standards, or policies set by governing bodies or organizations.
A follow-up is a communication sent after an initial interaction to continue the conversation, provide more value, or prompt a response.
The Dark Funnel describes customer buying activities that are untrackable by companies, such as private chats and word-of-mouth referrals.
The 80/20 rule, or Pareto Principle, posits that 80% of results come from just 20% of the effort. It's a key concept for prioritization.
Funnel analysis is a method for understanding the steps users take to complete a goal, revealing where they drop off in the conversion process.
Closing ratio is a key sales metric that shows the percentage of leads or proposals that result in a successful sale.
Analytical CRM analyzes customer data to uncover actionable insights, helping businesses make smarter decisions and improve customer interactions.
A sales cycle is the series of steps a company takes to close a new customer. It starts with prospecting and ends with a signed deal.
A sales coach is a mentor who trains and guides sales reps to enhance their skills, boost performance, and ultimately close more deals effectively.
A payment gateway is a service that authorizes and processes payments for businesses, acting as a secure link between the customer and the merchant.
Direct-to-consumer (D2C) is a sales strategy where a brand sells its products directly to end customers, bypassing any third-party retailers.
Analytics platforms are tools that collect and analyze data from various sources, helping businesses track key metrics and make informed decisions.
Lookalike audiences are groups of potential customers who share similar characteristics and behaviors with your existing, high-value customers.
Sales automation uses software to streamline and automate repetitive, manual sales tasks, freeing up reps to focus on selling.
The Challenger Sales model is a methodology where reps teach prospects, tailor their pitch, and take control of the sales conversation.
Learn about B2B data enrichment, including benefits of B2B data enrichment, implementing B2B data enrichment strategies, B2B data enrichment vs. data cleaning.
Cost Per Click (CPC) is a digital advertising model where an advertiser pays a fee each time one of their ads gets clicked by a user.
A marketing attribution model is a framework for assigning credit to the marketing touchpoints that lead a customer to convert.
Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) is a business model where companies sell products directly to customers, bypassing traditional retail middlemen.
Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is a focused B2B strategy where marketing and sales collaborate to target and convert high-value accounts.
Email marketing is a digital strategy where businesses send targeted emails to prospects and customers to build relationships and drive sales.
No Cold Calls is a sales strategy that replaces unsolicited calls with warm outreach to prospects who have already demonstrated interest.
The buying cycle is the journey a customer takes from first realizing they have a need to making the final purchase decision.
AI data enrichment uses artificial intelligence to automatically enhance and update raw data, making it more complete, accurate, and valuable.
Adobe Analytics is a leading web analytics solution for gaining real-time insights into user activity across websites and mobile applications.
An AI sales script generator is a tool that uses artificial intelligence to create personalized sales scripts for any outreach scenario.
A knowledge base is a self-serve online library of information about a product, service, department, or topic.
Inside sales metrics are quantifiable measures used to track the performance, activities, and effectiveness of an internal sales team.
Mid-market companies are businesses larger than small businesses but smaller than large enterprises, often defined by revenue or employee size.
AppExchange is Salesforce's cloud marketplace, offering a vast ecosystem of apps and expert services to extend Salesforce functionality.
White labeling is when a company puts its own branding on a product or service that was actually produced by a different company.
Lead generation software helps businesses automate finding and capturing potential customers' contact information to build sales pipelines.
Direct sales involves selling products directly to consumers in a non-retail setting, such as at home, online, or person-to-person.
On-Target Earnings (OTE) is a salesperson's total potential pay, combining base salary and commission for hitting their sales quota.
A Software Development Kit (SDK) is a set of tools that allows developers to create applications for a specific software package or platform.
Solution selling is a sales approach focused on understanding a customer's pain points to offer a comprehensive solution, not just a product.
Learn about big data, including understanding big data characteristics, benefits of leveraging big data, & challenges in managing big data.
Signaling is using credible actions to convey information about quality or intent to a less-informed party, effectively building trust.
A headless CMS is a back-end content repository that delivers content via API to any front-end, decoupling the content from its presentation layer.
Learn about B2B intent data, including how B2B intent data enhances sales strategies, sources of B2B intent data, leveraging B2B intent data for competitiveness.
A sales lead is a potential customer—an individual or organization that has shown interest in your company's products or services.
A sales enablement platform centralizes content, training, and analytics to help sales teams engage buyers and effectively close deals.
The marketing mix is the set of marketing tools a company uses to sell products, defined by the 4Ps: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion.
Call analytics is the practice of analyzing phone call data to extract insights, track key metrics, and improve overall business performance.
Content curation involves gathering, organizing, and sharing the most relevant online content on a specific topic for a particular audience.
A buying committee is a group of stakeholders within an organization who are jointly responsible for making major purchasing decisions.
Sales enablement content refers to the materials and tools that empower your sales team to engage prospects and close deals more efficiently.
Data-driven lead generation is the process of using data insights to identify, attract, and convert high-quality leads into customers.