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Reducing Data Collection While Offering Value to Customers

As marketers, we must find ways to offer customers value without relying on tactics that threaten their privacy, as global privacy regulations become more restrictive. The dilemma of sensitive data can be seen in the fact that 87% of Americans can be uniquely identified using basic information such as their date of birth, gender and five-digit zip code. Using customer data in advertising and marketing can be a risky business, so it is important to consider whether collecting sensitive data is necessary. For example, a restaurant may ask for customers' birthdays in order to offer them a free meal or discount during their birthday month, but it is likely that they do not need this information and could instead recognise the anniversary of the customer joining a loyalty program. Other alternatives include celebrating company milestones or creating single-channel offers by only collecting one piece of data such as an email address or mobile number. Segmentation can be done without relying on demographics, for example by building a segment around returning website visitors or night owl website visitors. However, care must be taken to avoid stereotyping customers by the devices they use. When gated content is necessary, companies can increase trust by being transparent about their use of such tools. Transparency can also help foster trust between the customer and the company by providing an explanation of why certain data is requested and how it will be used. Constraints can actually be a good thing, as they can spark creativity and innovation when it comes to finding sustainable and valuable tactics for long-term strategies. By leaning on experts in privacy law and public interest technology, we can ensure we are doing more with less data.

Originally reported by Martech: https://martech.org/marketing-value-and-data-doing-more-with-less/
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