In an ever-evolving world, customers are now expecting highly personalised experiences but are also becoming increasingly wary of giving their personal data. If an organisation is receiving limited data, how can they ensure they are remaining relevant to their customers?
In this article, we define personalisation and privacy and how your business can achieve the perfect balance.
What is personalisation?
In a marketing context, personalisation is: Tailoring an individual’s experiences to meet their unique set of requirements and expectations.
This is achieved through leveraging personal and behavioural information provided by an individual to ensure that their experiences are both timely and relevant.
Personalisation not only increases the effectiveness of communications but has also become an expected part of any B2C relationship. A 2020 study from McKinsey on retail personalisation found that 80% of respondents want personalization from retailers. However, with recent data breaches and the subsequent changes and the introduction of GDP consumers are warier in giving their personal information, wanting more privacy and control.
What is privacy?
In a marketing context, privacy is: How an individual expects the data that it shares, either directly or indirectly, with an organisation to be handled and used.
Individuals increasingly require an equitable value exchange with an organisation for the data that they provide. However, regardless of the value, they derive from their data, individuals expect it to be kept secure and used in an appropriate way. One study showed that 93% of Americans*considered it important to be able to control who could access their personal data.
It is increasingly challenging for marketers to find the right balance. Not only that, but how do they meet their regulatory requirements and regional laws?
As data is increasingly first party and includes personally identifiable information, it is becoming more sensitive not less. The ability for customers and companies to manage this data in a compliant way is becoming a key differentiator.
Over the past 5 years, Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) have entered the MarTech landscape and have evolved into the ideal platforms for these times. A good CDP can lower the data management burden by:
- Creating a maintaining a consolidated customer view for experience targeting
- Removing the need for custom MarTech integrations
- Enforcing consistent segmentation across channels
- Centralising consent and personalisation data storage
- Providing a personalisation data audit trail
You can achieve better personalisation and experiences while meeting your regulatory and governmental requirements around privacy but to do so you need to ensure you have clear personalisation objectives. Your organisation needs to understand and define its appetite for risk – and what its goals are. It is really important that when you are gathering your data, you only gather what you need to achieve your objectives. You can make it easier to manage your data and your customer’s consent by centralisating everything into a Customer Data Platform. And lastly, it is important to know the laws and regulations that apply to your organisation, industry and region.
To find out more about how a Customer Data Platform can help you achieve your personalisation objectives talk to us today.
* https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2015/05/20/americans-views-about-data-collection-and-security/