Personalization Vs.Privacy: Marketing’s Ultimate Heavyweight Match

Jodi Daniels is a privacy consultant and Red Clover Advisorsone of the few women’s business companies focused on privacy.

Over the past few years, a battle has been waged between two marketing heavyweights. However, this battle is not a showdown between humans. It lies between his two cardinal principles of modern marketing: personalization and privacy.

Personalization has been the king of marketing for years. The rise of e-commerce and digital marketing, and their attendant user tracking and data mining technologies, has accelerated the dominance of personalization to near-mythical status. For a while it seemed as though it would remain undefeated forever.

But champions fall most of the time. I think some companies have become greedy, using personalization as an excuse for dubious data collection and management. They collected too much information, some without permission, sold without permission, and didn’t keep it safe. A challenger has emerged following a massive data breach that exposed the sensitive personal information of millions of people.

Privacy has taken the marketing world by storm, with laws (see the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation or the California Consumer Privacy Act) and functional best practices regarding the online collection, processing, and sale of consumer information online. I changed both practices.

In the early days of this rivalry, some might have expected it to be a deathmatch. But with time and practice and a little experimentation, marketers and privacy advocates have found ways to transform personalization and privacy from competitors to teammates.

Complying with a patchwork of data privacy laws while balancing personalization and privacy is new territory. Laws and best practices are constantly evolving, so it can be difficult for marketing departments to successfully navigate compliance while maintaining operations.

To minimize wasted time and effort, here are four mistakes to avoid when building a privacy-centric marketing program.

• Mistake #1: Leave the data management process to IT.

• Mistake #2: Waiting to build a first party data program.

• Mistake #3: No Settings Center.

• Mistake #4: Promising one thing and doing another.

Let’s take a closer look at each of these four common mistakes.

Common mistakes to avoid if you want to balance privacy and personalization

1. Let IT handle the data management process

Before data privacy became as important as data security, it was common for all processes governing the collection, processing, storage, and protection of consumer data to be siled in IT departments. That model no longer works. Customer data flows through all departments, so building a culture of privacy within your company requires a collaborative approach.

Separating privacy tasks within the IT team may help achieve compliance. However, the resulting process is likely to be inefficient, cumbersome, and overly complex. In contrast, a cross-functional approach is more likely to result in strong and effective practices that leverage the strengths of each function.

2. Waiting to build a first-party data program

First Party Data is personal information that you voluntarily share with us. This information is more reliable than data collected by external vendors. It also costs less to acquire and is more likely to yield accurate insights.

Many digital marketers have used third-party data collection programs for years, but that is no longer possible. Most browsers are likely to stop supporting third-party cookies within the next few years if they don’t already. In my view, with third party cookies being phased out and first party his cookies giving more accurate information, waiting for this feature to be implemented is not a risk worth taking. is.

3. No Preference Center

A preference center is a website or app page that allows users to specify how their personal information is used. Having a preference center takes a lot of the guesswork out of marketing and managing customer data. Consent can be obtained and customers can tell when, how and how often they would like to be contacted.

4. Promise one thing and do another

This seems like a common sense proposition, but without the right segmentation processes and protections in place, it’s surprisingly easy to get to the wrong side of compliance.

Here is an example: Suppose you ask your customers to use their phone number as their membership ID for a rewards program. When they sign up, you tell them their number will be used to track purchases, store rewards, or contact you with shipping information.

But now your company has a new automated marketing tool that can send mass text messages, and your team is using numbers to send out information about upcoming semi-annual sales. By doing so, you violate all privacy practices and most privacy laws. Even if the customer gave you their phone number and knew you might contact them. How? We never told you that it could be used for marketing purposes. We also do not give permission to market via text.

Maintaining customer trust requires transparency, honesty and consistency. Whether you promise to improve email personalization or never share your data with third parties, you must do what you promise.

Personalization and privacy: a one-two punch

Marketing and privacy need not be mortal enemies. The right balance of personalization and privacy delivers the perfect combination of power punches needed to break compliance.

The Forbes Business Council is the premier growth and networking organization for business owners and leaders. am i eligible?