Personalized and targeted messages are important in getting higher engagement and making better sales. But in the modern digital age, privacy is one part that should never be ignored.
The internet has revolutionized how people communicate and conduct businesses, and it's the internet that also made people more accustomed in sharing personal information for the benefit of better services from companies they choose to trust.
But as more information are given, more and more people are growing concerns about how their data is used. Security and privacy are two things that should never be played with, but they are somehow crucial for businesses in delivering the best messages to them.
If people are concerned about giving sensitive information, they will keep the your marketing strategy at bay, difficult to grow, The less they share, the lesser power you have in reaching them.
One reason that caused this, is how people now realized the drawbacks of putting their lives online, opening up their sensitive information to brands for marketing practices, that somehow at their worst, highly invasive.
Brands use consumer data to target and reach their audiences, are facing challenges in addressing people's reluctance to share while still had to meet their business goals. They need to use effective marketing practices to acquire new customers, but also careful about not to go beyond the boundaries.
The key here is to linger into consumers' expectations for highly relevant and personalized contents, without having to intimidate them by showing their personal lives. Businesses need to show anything that is relevant to them because that is what people want.
However, consumers don’t want to share the intimate details of their lives, but they also don’t want to receive offers that have no relevance to them.
Without information about their customers, marketers have no way to produce and deliver content that's personalized to their needs.
So what can marketers do? How can marketers can use any of the available information without making people angry?
There are a few ways for marketers to ensure that they're keeping their customers' sensitive information save and 'not visible' in marketing terms, but still able to keep their customers’ best interests, and identifiers, in mind and under wraps without abandoning their acquisition goals and strategies.
Simple But Intuitive
The first rule, is to never ask about sensitive information before a person has gotten to know about your brand.
If users decide to register to your website and see a long subscription form requesting detailed information, they will be more likely to abandon the page and leave rather than filling out the form and be on board.
So here you need to keep your introductory form short and sweet, but also intuitive. Ask only the users' name and email address. First name and last name is optional and not necessary at first.
While those information won't seem like much, but they are indeed valuable. If you can pair usernames with their names and email addresses into your database, you have the very first foundation to build a relationship with these subscribers. After continued conversation, you can foster stronger bonds and reach deeper level of engagement.
Personalized With Boundaries
Relevant and personalized contents are the keys to drive high-value engagement. But if you think that you can quickly pull all that our to target your consumers, they will think that you are one creepy company.
Marketers need to understand the privacy implications of using customer data for personalization, and should recognize that there’s a fine line that should not be crossed when personalizing elements of a campaign.
The rule here is to use consumers' personal information in a general sense to segment and deliver targeted messages, but by withholding the exact details on the individual. For example, you may show where your users are located to send useful promotion and offer users some advise to certain stores in their local areas. But this content should never include the consumers' home address, distance to the store, or longitude/latitude and IP addresses.
Features That Put Consumers As The Owner Of The Data
You may have and store all of your customer's personal and sensitive information. But still, the data is not yours. It belongs to the owner of the data.
Customers like relevant and targeted contents. But if you kept invading them with things that may soon be too much for them, customers will soon realize that you have gone too far. It's important that there an option to change their preferences.
Because your customers own the data you're storing, they need to have access to it, and have the ability to change whenever they want. Create an option where they can add more information, or remove certain information from your database.
This privilege also include the ability to subscribe and unsubscribe.
Respect your subscribers’ choices, even if it hurts your business. Even if they result in a significant decrease in correspondence, you’ll still earn a greater trust from them.
Personal And Financial Information: Separate And Secured
Marketers need to take great caution about how they're protecting their customer data. They need to have strict policies and processes in place that keep customers’ personal identifiers, and especially financial information, far from hackers.
To ensure that data is secured, you may need to build a system that separate personal information from financial information. Use an email marketing system to store the data you’ll need to customize and personalize your marketing content for each customer.
Then, keep credit card information and billing and shipping addresses in a separate and distinct database with heightened security.
As consumers become more and more concerned about their privacy and security, marketers need to reassure them that their personal information will be protected at all cost. Businesses need to ensure themselves that they have processes and all the available precautions ready and in place in case anything goes wrong. They need to ensure customers' data safe and secure, and focus on building trust through transparency.
So despite your customers may have some worries when providing some sensitive information to you, they can feel safe because they're giving the data to a company that deserve their trust.