Celebrate Data Privacy Day with a Website Check Up!

Image credited to Adobe Stock.

January 28th was Data Privacy Day. First established in 2007 by the Council of Europe, Data Privacy Day (known as “Data Protection Day” in Europe) is recognized annually on January 28 and observed in 47 European countries, the United States, Canada, and India. It commemorates the January 28, 1981 signing of the first legally binding international treaty dealing with privacy and data protection (Convention 108). Although privacy professionals celebrate data privacy day every day, it is exciting to have a dedicated day to recognize the importance of respecting privacy, safeguarding data, enabling consumer trust, and sharing privacy best practices. Adobe is proud to be among other leading brands that have signed up to be a Data Privacy Day Champion through StaySafeOnline.

To celebrate Data Privacy Day, we have teamed up with ObservePoint, a Premier partner in the Adobe Exchange program, to offer a complimentary website scan to the first 1,000 customers taking advantage of this offer. In addition to the standard free scan ObservePoint offers, this scan will highlight some of the most common issues websites face including links to the privacy policy on every page, verifying if your privacy cookies are active, and checking to see if your consent manager is working on every necessary page. Knowing and understanding which tags are on your site, and whether your privacy cookies and consent manager are working correctly, is a great first step in a brand’s journey towards readiness for the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Europe’s new privacy law, which takes effect in May 2018.

Here at Adobe, we are committed to GDPR readiness both as a data controller and as a data processor. On the enterprise side, it couldn’t be more energizing to help our customers develop their privacy narratives.

As we get closer to May, most marketers are spending a great deal of time thinking about how the new rules under GDPR will impact their ability to provide personalized content and offerings to their consumers. We encourage brands to look at GDPR as an opportunity to further lean into customer centricity. Adobe has been leading the way in helping brands transform into Experience Businesses, and GDPR presents a great opportunity for brands to rethink the customer experience with privacy in mind–experiential privacy.

On the enterprise side, Adobe wants to help brands look beyond compliance to build a robust privacy framework for our customers’ marketing efforts. Our products and services are designed with privacy in mind, guided by the following four principles:

  1. Help our customers responsibly unlock the power of data;
  2. Protect and respect the data entrusted to us;
  3. Help our customers build and sustain trust with their consumers; and
  4. Continually innovate to grow our strong privacy partnership with our customers.

What does experiential privacy really mean?

Experiential privacy means that when done right, privacy is a positive part of the experience and further delights the customer. A customer journey map guided by experiential privacy involves marketers being thoughtful about what data they collect, providing easy-to-understand notice about how that data is used at meaningful points along the journey, and offering consumers choices about how their data is used. Think of an airline explaining through a just-in-time notice within its app why access to GPS data is needed to help users find their cars upon returning from a trip.

Or a coffee company creating an on-brand experience to obtain the needed consent, rather than doing so through a plain pop-up banner. So, for example, the site could use an illustration that relates the strengths of coffee (light, medium, dark) to the various types of cookies (e.g., required, functional, advertising) the brand is seeking consent to set.

Concept by OneTrust.

These approaches can be an effective way to communicate the consumer value proposition of data collection in a world where obtaining consent will be increasingly important and where a positive privacy experience will be a way to differentiate brands. If consumers understand the power of data to provide a more personalized experience, and brands have built trust through transparency, consumers will be more likely to give their consent and engage in a meaningful way. Designing experiences with privacy in mind is a smart investment in the future.

Journey towards May

With GDPR being just around the corner, Adobe either already meets or is in the process of implementing our obligations for GDPR readiness. As a data processor to our enterprise customers, we are here to help our customers get to GDPR readiness as well.

To learn more about what Adobe is doing for GDPR and what we’re doing to help brands prepare, please see:

To get started, get your complimentary website scan powered by ObservePoint.