Non-compliant marketing communications are the nemesis of any organization operating in a highly regulated industry. All it takes is just one strike of noncompliance to knock an organization down and harm its consumers, reputation, and bottom line.
Compliance teams are the superheroes that all organizations need to keep their business successful and out of hot water with the regulators. They are tasked with the important job of ensuring that their consumer protection programs keep pace with regulatory change and best practices.
So, what does the average compliance team look like? How many people are on the team? How much content are they reviewing? What do their budgets and spending look like? And what are their biggest challenges?
To find out, PerformLine’s State of Marketing Compliance Report uncovered key trends that organizations are facing today to tell a short story about compliance teams, their challenges, and how they can overcome their noncompliance nemesis.
Although vital, a compliance team’s job isn’t easy…
62% of organizations have compliance teams of 5 or less
Smaller compliance teams seem to be the norm, regardless of the size of the organization—only 38% of organizations reported having larger teams of 6 or more. Even for large enterprises with over $1 billion in annual revenue, only 33% reported having a larger team of 6 or more.
Despite the trend towards smaller compliance teams, it’s important to note that the responsibilities and workload of these teams have not diminished. In fact, with the increasing demands on organizations to adhere to a growing number of regulations and increased regulatory scrutiny, the workload for compliance teams has only increased.
This highlights the need for organizations to invest in resources, such as compliance monitoring technology and training, that can help smaller teams manage their workload and stay on top of compliance requirements (more on this later).
While small compliance teams are common, these teams are reviewing and approving a lot of marketing content for compliance…
55% of organizations review 50 or more marketing collateral pieces per month
The manual marketing compliance review process for content involves a thorough examination of the content to ensure it adheres to regulations, laws, and company policies.
Compliance teams first have to read the content in its entirety. For example, assuming that they’re reading slowly to make sure that they catch any potential compliance issues, it would likely take a person anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes to read a content piece that’s about 2,000 words (the length of an average long-form blog post). Let’s say that person has 5 blog posts to read—that could take 1.25 hours alone.
This process can be further prolonged if the content needs to be edited or revised to meet the compliance requirements. According to data from the PerformLine platform, 52% of content pieces submitted for review in 2022 were flagged for at least one potential compliance issue.
In such cases, the content goes through several rounds of back-and-forth between the reviewer and the content creator, which adds to the time it takes to complete the review.
Between reading and reviewing a high volume of content for compliance, and the potential to go through several rounds of back-and-forth for edits and revisions, the manual compliance review process can be very time-consuming for compliance teams.
The more documents with compliance issues, the more revisions need to be made, increasing the time it takes to get content approved and out the door—creating challenges for these small compliance teams…
26% of organizations struggle with bandwidth and headcount when it comes to marketing compliance
When small compliance teams are tasked with an abundance of marketing content to review and approve at any given time, on top of their responsibility of staying on top of a complex and ever-evolving regulatory environment, it’s no wonder bandwidth and headcount are top marketing compliance challenges for organizations.
Likely because of this limited bandwidth and headcount…
58% of organizations lack compliance monitoring on at least one channel they’re using for marketing
Omni-channel marketing strategies are becoming increasingly popular among organizations as they strive to reach customers through multiple touchpoints and create a seamless customer experience.
But, despite the widespread use of an omni-channel approach, many organizations lack comprehensive oversight that would allow them to effectively monitor compliance across all channels. This gap in compliance monitoring creates a significant risk for organizations, as they may be unaware of potential compliance violations or breaches of regulations in their marketing efforts.
While organizations acknowledge these challenges…
Only 41% of organizations expect compliance budgets to grow in 2023
Marketing compliance budgets can vary greatly across organizations of different sizes, with larger organizations often having a larger budget allocated to compliance efforts.
However, despite this variation, the overall trend is that compliance spending has slowed over the last year—only 41% of respondents expect their compliance budgets to grow in 2023, compared to 65% who expected growth in 2022.
This slowdown could be due to a variety of factors, including economic conditions, changes in the regulatory landscape, and shifts in the priorities of organizations.
Nevertheless, organizations understand the importance of investing in compliance teams, because…
Top areas of compliance spend are employee costs and compliance technology
Currently, the top areas of spending for compliance budgets are employee costs (39%) and compliance technology (33%).
Compared to 2022, organizations increased spending on employee costs and compliance technology services and decreased spending on training and development and consulting and legal services.
For organizations who expect an increase in compliance budget this year, they’re planning on increasing their spending on employee costs (37%), compliance technology (27%), and training and development (21%).
PerformLine To The Rescue
Every superhero needs a sidekick. Let PerformLine be your compliance team’s partner to do the heavy lifting and let your heroes focus on their most important priorities.
Whether you’re looking for comprehensive oversight across all your marketing channels, need extra bandwidth to review and fix compliance issues, or just don’t know where to start with your compliance program, PerformLine’s omni-channel compliance monitoring solution can help you build a compliance program that’s customizable, automated, and scalable.
Gianna Kennedy