how much data can you hold/should you hold for marketing purposes?

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How much data can you hold/should you hold for Marketing purposes?

Tim Beadle, Director, Marketing Improvement,

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Overview

• - What should you hold?• - How long can you hold it?• - What are the best tactics to get what you

want?

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Why worry at all?

Visibility = opportunity for complaint

Marketing is highly visible

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Case Study

• Provider of OTC medical device– In pack registration card– Asked for:

• Nature of illness• Age• Gender• Name & Address

• Greek Information Commissioner held that:– Despite information being freely given and consumer

being fully informed about the purpose, this was “excessive” and age and nature of illness had to be removed

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So what should you hold?

Send me the bulletinUse my emailDon’t Text meI’m on TPS

john.jones@company.comjohn.jones@home.co.uk

familyjones@home.co.uk

Marketing wants to hold “everything”

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But the law says:

• “relevant and not excessive for purpose”• But relevant to what?

– To the marketers ambition?– To the customer’s needs?

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Case Study 2

• RSA Security ran a study in Central Park, New York

• A researcher asked for:– Name– Address– Email– Date of birth– Place of birth– Mother’s maiden name

• Nearly 85% provided full name, address & email, 70% also provided maiden name!

• What persuaded people to give all this info?

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Case Study 3

• Head of MI6– Wife posts pictures and information on FaceBook– Names of children– Fact that he is “Head of MI6”– Address– Name– Choice of swimwear

• Do consumers expect privacy online anymore?

• Do they care?

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Case Study 4

• “Behavioural advertising”– Consumer pressure forced FaceBook to backtrack on

“Beacon” behavioural targeting, except where specifically opted-in

– BT drops Phorm amid accusations that trial breached EU data privacy law, despite non-investigation by UK IC.

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So, is it the law or the consumer?

• A bit of both• Consumers are “behind the curve” but are

catching up very fast• Age determines attitude:

– Sub 25yrs – know anything they post is “public domain” and accept the risk – but are actually not really aware of true risk

– 25 – 55 – 1/3 don’t care, 1/3 do care and 1/3 have no idea

– 55+ mostly very web-savvy and cautious online

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What can you hold?

• Increasingly less and less– Don’t ask for D.O.B.,ask:

• what is your Y.O.B.?

– Don’t ask for interests, ask:• “do you buy your pet a gift for Xmas?”

– Don’t ask for income, ask for PostCode• Household income is available as modelled data

• Make marketers JUSTIFY why they want data and what they plan to do with it.– Most data that’s captured NEVER gets used by anyone

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How long can you hold data

• “not indefinitely”• In a recent survey 68% of companies have no

defined data retention periods, yet:– People move house every 12 years– People change job every 7 years– People divorce every 7 years– People change cars every 2.6 years– People change interests/hobbies every 8 months

• Any data more than 3 yrs old is more likely to be wrong than right

• Companies MUST be more pragmatic about data and “dare to delete!”

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Getting what you want

• Honesty is the best policy• E.g. 3rd Party consent ……

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Getting what you want

“Tick here if you would like to receive information and valuable offers from carefully selected partners”

Wording on form:

What this really means:

“We’re desperate for cash and we want to flog you name to anyone who’llGive us money so they can carpet-bomb your letterbox/inbox with Mindlessly targeted junk that no-one in their right mind would want”

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Getting what you want

• Bad practice

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3 cheers for Whittards…

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Thankyou for your time

tim.beadle@mieurope.eu07768 512445