GDPR Question: Any advise on how to handle reporting of deleted/opted-out EU leads?

[Anonymous]

Seems like the biggest issue with GDPR is the fact that leads that DO NOT opt-in will need to be deleted from Marketo/CRM. That is going to affect our marketing reporting immensely. I know there is a feature request asking Marketo to create an "Anonymize Lead" field and flowstep by Gregoire (I've already voted up), but is Marketo really going to create that field before May 25? If not, how are you handling your reporting beginning May 25, 2018?

At first, my team was thinking of making sure we have our conversion goals set-up properly in Google Analytics so we can track form conversions through GA. But then we became unsure if we would be able to use the GA cookie if a lead also opts out of cookies. Does anyone know if GA tracking cookie would count under GDPR?

Any advice or examples would greatly be appreciated.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

HI Shirleen,

GA Cookies are anonymous by design and do not fall under the GDPR, unless you have linked GA with Marketo and the cookies are no longer anonymous...

But GA cookies, like Marketo ones, fall under the opt-in cookies regulations, that are older than the GDPR and already applicable in most western countries. (Please note that the EU is planning for 2019 another directive, called e-privacy, that will significantly revise and harmonize the opt-in cookie).

In the meantime, you can still anonymize your leads yourself with a smart campaign. It's not as good as a true implementation by Marketo, but the Data value change activities will be discarded by Marketo after 3 months, removing any reference to who the person is. The tricky part is regarding Marketo cookies. You can delete them from the browser with some JS on Marketo LP's, which will make them inactive on Marketo side, but will not delete them.

-Greg

[Anonymous]

Hi Gregoire,

Thank you for the explanation. I did not know that Marketo will discard the data value change activities after 3 months so that is good news to us.

So for example, if I set up smart campaigns to change data value on name, email, phone, and any other PII data to 'NULL' let's say, then after 3 months Marketo would delete the history on the lead audit trail showing that the data value changed from "Joe Smith" to "NULL", therefore deleting the original information the lead came in with?

Thank you,

Shirleen

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Shirleen,

yes this is it.

Read this: Marketo Activities Data Retention Policy - Overview & FAQ

-Greg