Jodi Daniels is a privacy consultant and founder/CEO of Advisors Red Cloverone of the few Women’s Business Enterprises focused on privacy.
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A battle between two marketing heavyweights has been brewing for a few years now. But the fight is not between a few human contenders. It sits between two basics of modern marketing: personalization and privacy.
What I see as the reigning champion, personalization has been the king of marketing for years. The rise of e-commerce and digital marketing, and associated user tracking and data mining technologies, accelerated the dominance of personalization to almost mythical status. For a moment it looked like it would go undefeated forever.
But champions almost always fall. I believe some companies have become greedy by using personalization as an excuse for shady data collection and management practices. They collected too much information, partly without permission, sold it without permission and stored it insecurely. In the wake of massive data breaches that exposed millions of people’s sensitive personal information, a challenger rose.
Privacy has taken the marketing world by storm, changing both the law (see the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation or the California Consumer Privacy Act) and functional best practices related to the online collection, processing, and sale of consumer information online.
In the early days of this rivalry, some might have expected it to be a deadly contest. But with time, practice, and a little experimentation, marketers and privacy advocates have found a way to turn personalization and privacy from competitors to teammates.
Balancing personalization and privacy while complying with a patchwork of data privacy laws is new territory. With laws and best practices constantly evolving, it can be difficult for marketing departments to successfully navigate compliance while maintaining operations.
To help you minimize wasted time and effort, here are four mistakes to avoid when setting up a privacy-focused marketing program.
• Mistake #1: Leaving data management processes to IT.
• Mistake #2: Waiting to build a first-party data program.
• Mistake #3: Not having a preference center.
• Mistake No. 4: Promising one thing and doing another.
Let’s take a closer look at each of these four common mistakes.
Contents
Common mistakes to avoid when balancing privacy and personalization
1. Leave data management processes to IT
Before data privacy became as important as data security, it was the norm for all processes for collecting, processing, storing and protecting consumer data to be placed in the IT department. That model no longer works. Because customer data passes through every department, building a culture of privacy in your company requires a collaborative approach.
Isolating privacy tasks within your IT team may help you achieve compliance. But the resulting processes are likely to be inefficient, clunky, and overly complicated. In contrast, a cross-functional approach is more likely to result in powerfully effective practices that capitalize on each function’s strengths.
2. Waiting to build a first-party data program
Proprietary data is personal data that your users voluntarily share with you. This information is more reliable than data collected by third-party providers. It also costs less to obtain and is likely to yield more accurate insights.
Many digital marketers have used third-party data collection programs for years, but that won’t be possible for much longer. If they haven’t already, most browsers will probably quit support of third-party cookies within the next few years. From my perspective, waiting for this feature to be implemented is a risk not worth waiting to phase out third-party and first-party cookies that provide more accurate information.
3. Not having a preferred center
A preference center is a page on your website or app where you can tell your users how they want their personal information to be used. Having a preference center takes a lot of the guesswork out of marketing and managing customer data. You can collect consent and your customers can tell you when, how and how often they want to be contacted.
4. Promise one thing and do another
This seems like a common sense suggestion, but it’s surprisingly easy to end up on the wrong side of compliance if you don’t have proper segmentation processes and protections in place.
Here’s an example: Say you ask customers to use their phone numbers as their membership ID for your rewards program. When they sign up, tell them their number will be used to track purchases, save rewards, or contact you with shipping information. There is nothing in your disclosure about marketing.
But now your company has a new automated marketing tool that lets you send mass text messages, and your team uses the numbers to send information about an upcoming semi-annual sale. By doing so, you have violated all privacy practices and most privacy laws, even though your customers gave you their number and knew you could contact them. How? You never told them it could be used for marketing purposes, and they didn’t give you permission to advertise to them via SMS.
Maintaining customer trust means being transparent, honest and consistent. Whether you promise to improve email personalization or not share data with third parties, you must do what you say you will do.
Personalization and privacy: a one-two punch
Marketing and privacy need not be mortal enemies. Balanced correctly, personalization and privacy can deliver the perfect power punch combination you need to take compliance out of the park.
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Janice has been with businesskinda for 5 years, writing copy for client websites, blog posts, EDMs and other mediums to engage readers and encourage action. By collaborating with clients, our SEO manager and the wider businesskinda team, Janice seeks to understand an audience before creating memorable, persuasive copy.