Since 1 June 2022, Thailand has finally enforced its PDPA law causing a wave of concerns among its businesses. In this article, Convert Digital will outline just what is PDPA and how business may start adapting to a cookieless world to continue optimizing and retargeting its customers while keeping their privacy in check.
What is PDPA?
PDPA (Personal Data Protection Act) is basically a Thai adaptation of GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). The law is meant to keep information misuses in check and also states that any use of personal information from any business will need a proper consent otherwise they may not be used lawfully.
What is Personal Information?
Businesses keep their customer data in many forms which may include a lot of personal and sensitive information. Once the PDPA law is enforced, companies must comply with it by verifying their existing database of data and request consent from people within its file before using them.
Personal data includes but may not limited to the below:
- Name and surname
- Phone number, email, address
- Date of birth, weight and height
- ID number, passport number, driver license
- Education, financial or medical information
- Car registration number, land or house registration
- Any other information that may be identifiable such as Username/Password, Cookies, IP address, GPS location and more
Also, companies must be especially careful around these ‘sensitive information’ below:
- Ethnicity and race
- Political opinions
- Religious and beliefs
- Sexuality
- Criminal record
- Worker union information
- Medical information such as disabilities, vaccination record, doctor’s certificate and more
- Genetic information such as face, retina information, fingerprint information and more
How PDPA Has Changed Digital Marketing?
This is the first step to have your business listed on all searches and services on Google. Open your first Google My Business account if you had not done so earlier and put in your business information such as name, address, telephone number and images.
Visit this link here to get started.
Once you opened the account, go to ‘Info’ tab and fill your business information including your operating time and website. Then you jump to ‘photo’ section to add nice images of your business – set one for your profile and another for a cover photo.
Prepare Your Business for A World of Consent
We know information is gold. Businesses need to state on their website what data will be collected, how they will be used and where to read the full privacy policy. Also, it needs good security to keep all this data in check. But that’s just to comply with the law.
To make use of today’s advanced advertising platforms, which fortunately developed for a cookieless world, businesses should also start collecting ‘First Party Data’ which means building a real customer list from various sources with consent checked. This will bypass the use of cookies and require a bit more work to do, but you have almost no choice because in a few years, everything online will be very much anonymous.
Steps to Adapt:
- Have your ‘Privacy Policy’ page with clear details on the website
- Inform all of your customers to give consent by email, cookie banner, etc.
- Adapt the use of website cookie banners to collect crucial information we used to collect. If the customer refuses, your analytics tool may not be working at all.
- In case of information leakage, have a plan to notify your customers.
- Plan to collect first party data in place of using cookies. Think creatively to scrape relevant customer data such as name, email, phone and more but always ask for consent when you collect.
There is still much to do to ensure your business thrive and win under this new rule. If you are concerned about the future of your marketing actions, consult us for free and we will show you the way.
About Post Author
Rawin Rojanathara : Managing Director
A digital marketing veteran with over 10 years of comprehensive experience across SEO, performance marketing, content creation and business strategy. With an MBA, Design and Hospitality background, Rawin combines business acumen and aesthetic sensibility for maximum results. Away from the office, he can be found perfecting his table tennis skills or indulging his passion for food and travel exploration.