HubSpot’s New Prospecting Tool Restrictions Give Leadfeeder the Edge in Competitor Analysis
The EU devised General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), came into existence on the 25th of May 2018. It is a comprehensive policy and regulation that dictates the transmission and use of personal data belonging to people living and working in Europe.
The regulations covered personal data of almost every kind including a persons travel history, religious affiliation, internet search and history, their biometric data, their personal address, employer, credit cards and more.
The legislation and regulations are not only broad and sweeping they have also proved to be costly.
The immediate costs have to do with implementation and creation of the necessary internal and external business structures. And while the long-term costs are yet to be felt, some online digital sectors are already getting a glimpse of the possible negative impact of the GDPR.
One example would be the content giant, HubSpot. As a result of GDPR implementation, HubSpot decided it would have to remove page views and activities from their prospector tool.
The reason they removed the data in question was that they weren’t able to be 100% compliant with GDPR.
Leadfeeder, who also provide online data-driven prospecting and marketing tools, and a major competitor with HubSpot has remained compliant while keeping these essential features in place.
This is a significant disadvantage for HubSpot users — one that no longer makes HubSpot a real competitor with Leadfeeder anymore because their users lose out on insights that Leadfeeder still provides.
Prospecting Tools like those provided by Leadfeeder allow business marketing team to gain valuable insight into user behaviour, demography and geography. They provide the necessary tools and integration to identify and capture individual leads as well as enable the prospecting and data mining of entire organisations and companies.
By restricting access to this data, those tools that do not comply with the GDPR may soon become of no or little value to users.
The statement sent out by HubSpot told their users that,
“The reason this change was implemented across all prospects, not only EU based ip’s, is because the IP address is not a reliable identifier of a person’s actual location or citizenship. For example, if someone is using a VPN service, it might not be their exact location. Also, if your audience is one that frequently flies for business, there is a chance that an EU citizen being in America and not seeing the privacy display as he or she should.
There is no way for HubSpot to tell who’s information we can share in the prospects tool without their consent based on IP.”
In this new environment (and to the user’s advantage), digital creators like Leadfeeder are coming up with more sophisticated prospecting tools to meet the demands of the regulations.
The GDPR it not only bringing change to the work of developers and software engineers in particular. It’s regulations also impact the online marketing in general.
Companies such as Leadfeeder, Google and Hotjar have already taken numerous steps to ensure compliance. It now remains to be seen how compliance will affect business and marketing teams on the ground more broadly.
The regulations call for plain language and full, transparent disclosure of the kind of information being collected. These are trust factors that are going to affect any site that is requesting information from its users.
More generally, a businesses use, and the new regulations will also impact implementation of referral systems, email marketing and affiliate programs.
If you’re unsure about the tactics your company has used in the past to generate leads, acquire contact details and develop subscription lists, now is an excellent time to review those policies and marketing tactics to ensure that you are compliant.
If you have European visitors who may not have used your content or services for a while, it may be a good idea to ask for permission to contact them once again. Apart from good business under the new regulations, such steps should not be seen as burdensome but as simply good manners.
For many companies, the way forward will be to simply not ask for information that is not absolutely necessary. If you’re providing a solid product and using reliable marketing methods, you should find yourself with a willing and ready audience.
If you’re an organisation providing innovative and data-driven online tools, then now is the time for you to address all of the issues related to compliance to ensure that your digital tools remain relevant, user-friendly and useful with the contemporary regulations now in force throughout Europe.
Feature Image PXHere, CC0 Public Domain
