Aim of this project is to develop new marketing communication consent formats using principles of Behavioural Economics (choice architecture / nudges) and test these new consent formats using behavioural experiments in RCT format.
Our client, one of the largest financial institutions in UK, was concerned about impact of General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR, came in force on May 2018) on bank’s ability to maintain active digital marketing communication channels with existing and new clients. Apart from general data compliance part, GDPR requires not only “unambiguous” consent from clients to send any marketing promotion materials, but also it requires this consent to be reconfirmed at certain time intervals. In another words, businesses are no longer allowed to obtain marketing consent by using defaults for opt-in/opt-out boxes.
Why is it a challenge? An empirical evidence from companies who stopped using opt-in/opt-out boxes with defaults demonstrates the drop in consent rates from 70% to 30%.
Priority was given to collection of empirical data on what works when observing consumer behaviour.
Expilab Research team has designed and conducted behavioural experiment in Randomized Controlled Trial format with a control group (existing marketing consent format that already complies with GDPR). Online experiment was conducted on Expilab’s digital platform for behavioural research that allows simulating typical consumer decisions in the financial context.
Using empirical data collected via behavioural experiment, the best performing marketing consent format was identified. Consent rates for receiving marketing promo communications increased by more than 35%
Search for the best alternative consent formats highlighted the importance of empirical testing of proposed formats – some formats may backfire on the consent rate despite demonstrated positive results in other industries or contexts (e.g. based on “classical” nudges such as loss aversion)
Performance (consent rate) of marketing consent formats vary across different socio-demographic profiles of the customers and digital communication channels.