COMPLIANCECAST is BACK with our last interview from the recent Affiliate Summit West show floor. In this episode we are talking with the VP of Business Development, Tim Hartley from Webbula and we chat over the importance of email compliance, data tracking, and how holistic regulation on email could be coming soon.

Tim opens up with his thoughts on the growth in activity within the space – 

“I’m really excited to be here at the show! As we come into 2023, you’re seeing a lot more people not only come out, there’s a lot more activity in the industry. So, we are really excited to see how email and data are really going to affect that. From an email standpoint, we’re really excited to look at things like compliance, also on how people can do a better job of monetizing that email and really interacting with our customers and segmenting properly.”

Tom goes on to ask about the changes in the email industry and compliance –

“What do you expect to see happening in the email industry this year? You touch on compliance, how important do you see that being to the long-term future of brand’s email programs and the email industry itself?”

“You know, what we’re seeing from our standpoint is people trying to track those clicks and opens, people are concerned about privacy. So, really, working with more partners to help get those signals, so that marketers can do a better job of tightening that up, what we’re doing is leveraging our network to help increase that so that everyone’s being more compliant and doing a better job of tracking their data.”

Tim then finishes off by speaking on compliance and regulation –

“So, from a long-term standpoint, we’re already seeing laws that are going into effect. You’ve got CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act), and you’ve now got some other states that are starting to roll out their own. I’m forecasting over the next decade, what we’re going to see is something along the lines of GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), we’re going to see that come to the US. Once that happens, you’re going to have a lot more brands who are going to have to crack down and really focus on making sure that they let their customers know how their data is being processed, and how the emails are being spread out. Either between their sub-brands or with other affiliates and brands that they’re working with. So, it’s going to be really critical and really important that everyone has those tags in there that say ‘I opt-in for this, I opt out for that.’ Over the next 10 years, we’re headed towards a more holistic approach.”

It was great catching up with Tim at Affiliate Summit West and really digging into his knowledge and expertise about the industry. We hope you enjoyed watching and in case you missed it, be sure to check out our other episodes of Compliance Cast in our Video Library!

We’ll be back soon with the next episode!