Lack of email validation and opt-in processes hinder organizations from achieving compliance

Pathwire released the results of its Data Compliance Survey, a survey of 1,000 IT and marketing decision-makers across the globe on the most common data privacy and compliance trends and challenges.

Comply with privacy laws

The findings reveal 44.7% of organizations have had to add or change technology in the marketing stack to comply with privacy laws, and some are spending upwards of $10,000 every year to remain up to date with requirements.

The majority of survey respondents were based in EMEA (65.4%) and North America (21.7%), which indicates that almost all organizations represented in the study would fall, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), CAN-SPAM Act and/or the California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA).

The top industries represented in the study were IT (35.1%), professional services (13.9%) and financial services (4.4%), which introduces other compliance categories such as Consumer Data Protection Act (CDPA) or Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

Despite the fact that most organizations today are required to comply with all privacy regulations as end users can come from any country, 62.4% of respondents reported that their organization is not “completely compliant” with GDPR, CCPA, the new Virginia CDPA or other applicable regulations, depending on region. 24.4% of the respondents don’t even know under which jurisdiction their organization falls.

Respondents’ answers also varied depending on region, particularly in how many required technology additions to their marketing stack to comply with privacy laws. For example, only 35.4% in North America added to their stack, while almost half (49.5%) of respondents in EMEA noted an added spend.

Email validation

Even if not mandatory, less than 40% of respondents said their company implements double opt-in when collecting new email addresses – a best practice of sending a confirmation email to ensure the validity of the addresses.

“Every email marketer in business today is under some sort of privacy regulation, whether industry-specific, region-specific or a combination of the two,” said Nicole Jacobson, VP of Marketing at Pathwire. “Because of the increase in compliance mandates, many businesses are pouring resources into their marketing technology stack in order to make compliance more attainable and provide a better customer experience overall. A very cost-effective and efficient way to choose partners that offer compliant solutions is through email validation as it is one of the very first touchpoints that ultimately determines the success of an email sender’s strategy.”