how much data can you hold/should you hold for marketing purposes?
DESCRIPTION
Presentation to the 2009 Privacy and Data Protection Conference - LondonTRANSCRIPT
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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
[email protected]@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…
