Marketers are Not Doing a Good Job Marketing Online Privacy

Posted on April 21, 2011 by teds

Smartphones that track our every step and record it all down in an unsecure place. Behavioral targeted ads that stalk us around the web and know everything we even considered buying. Data record sites that offer to sell every old address, job and the names of our ex’s too.

If you were a typical consumer reading the news right now I’d bet you would think that the web had turned into one giant privacy problem in need of a very big piece of legislation to save your identity. And that’s exactly the problem – people don’t understand the issue.

No doubt there are bad marketers, bad services and bad uses of very personal information out there. There is almost always some baseline truth to legislation, a real issue that needs to be solved. But data has been collected and used long before the web and in much greater and potentially scarier ways. Grocery store chains don’t scan club cards for fun. Direct marketers didn’t randomly get lucky and find your new address to keep sending “junk mail” too. When you call a utility company and are asked to provide the last four digits of your social security number that you provide are not being given to someone who spent 4 years in ethics courses and risks a long career by doing anything bad. Data has needed rules for a long, long time.

So why now? Why regulation for the web?

I studied politics & society extensively in college [finally a good link between my degrees and work] but I’m no expert in this field so I can only assume that the decision for action “now” comes down to visibility of the issue, driven likely by the web its self. Hopefully it is a desire to protect people, rather than an attempt to catch the eye of the media [and voters], that spawned the laws we are seeing hit the committee rooms of the Senate but regardless the result is the same.

We have politicians trying to in-act a law to police something which few of them use [Obama’s Facebook townhall meeting being the first web-tech event I recall ever seeing a president, past or present] and which is, all things said, still in its relative infancy. Not a good combination when the web industry just begun to extol the benefits of the very thing that people are looking for us to stop.

Marketers are not doing a good job marketing privacy.

The vast majority of sites, especially the ones that people actually like (and therefore have most of the data) are run by people who I would call ethical, or at least smart enough to know that there’s no real benefit in being unethical.

Dan Rowinski said it simply in a recent RWW article on this very subject, “Data is the lifeblood of the Web”. We all know this and we all know that while critical, data is just that – data: millions of records and entries that can seem highly targeted and relevant but are in fact so voluminous that how any individual fits, or doesn’t fit into it is virtually irrelevant. It’s not about the individual; it’s about the characteristics of a random identifier an individual poses. There’s no money in caring who Sally is versus serving ads to id 8cEfd342kA0zK. And that’s good for privacy.

We all know this but the populous (politicians and consumers) don’t. To many, data is something being misused at every turn in a space where marketers are running around without rules or consequences.

Education can turn potential negatives into positives.

I can recall a hundred experiences watching TV or Sports with friends where some irrelevant ad comes on and the whole room complains or flips the channel. Before any more news articles hit further condemning our industry to an immediate fate, we need to step out and look at privacy just like we look at conversion or retention and start optimizing our sites, our marketing and get in front of the issue.

There are real benefits to data but we’re not doing a good job of reminding people of them, or of the steps we take to protect that data.

1. Explain the benefits of data to the experience. If you’re mint.com or facebook people use you because of the data you collect. They want intelligent services that make suggestions, find friends, show you what’s happening in your world and as a result we’re just starting to get into web 3.0 and the era of data driven services. In turn users know they give data and while they may comment that the suggestions are a bit creepy at time, they rave about the systems. But do they realize the correlation? We have to remind them that to get personal you have to have an identity, even if it’s just a few attributes.

Facebook’s 3^rd party permission popups are a bit ominous but the idea is solid. Here’s what we have on you, here’s what you’re sharing with some application, do you want to do it? Not every site needs to go this far but if we explain what we capture and how it makes the experience; people can make an intelligent choice along the way and see the upsides. If they choose not to share then they don’t get to play with the same toys – that’s life.

2. Offer a relevant ad or an irrelevant one. People rave about Amazon’s suggestions despite the fact that they are ads because they’re relevant. The same people say they don’t click ads and at less than a quarter of a percent they don’t click them – much – but when the ad fits it stops being so much of an ad and becomes useful which is why conversion rates on targeting prove that this model works. Whether they click or ignore, relevant is [generally] preferred.

Rather than running the current PSA’s on unused inventory how about a small campaign to extol the benefit s of targeting to giving the user something relevant, something they could on occasion discover. The same goes for those advertising with these methods – put a tag on the landing page, explain the campaign and why it works. 1/100^th or 1/1000^th of 1% of all internet advertising is nothing to sneeze at; we have the audience and the tools.

3. Privacy policies in their current form have to go or at the very least be replaced by human readable explanations of what we are doing. What is captured? Where does it go? Who can see it? And how can the user opt-out? 3 page, 10-point font documents hidden in the footer do not make people feel secure. Infographics, Tooltips in registration, FAQs, video and all the other things we use to sell people show value in sharing. A for B.

4. Anonymity, policies and control must be the norm. Most companies can find ways to get back from a profile to a person, through multiple databases or by storing information that’s freeform enough to allow for personality identity but we don’t. This is where it’s critical that people, especially those in office, understand what the industry is doing to keep the secrets locked away. We have industry policies, certifications like TRUSTe and PCI, but these are being skipped over in commentary so you can bet they are being ignored behind the doors in D.C.

Regulation will come we know that, and should embrace it as there are unscrupulous people out there but we should be the ones painting a picture of what it is we do, why we do it, and enable people to choose what they want just as we have a choice right now, sit back and see what comes, or step out and have a say in the issue .

Relevant reading:

Storm Brewing: Commercial Data Bill Of Rights Introduced - ReadWriteWeb

Another privacy bill is introduced in Congress - Internet Retailer

Where are the social deals? Daily deals in a social media driven world.

Posted on April 11, 2011 by teds

Daily deals are this year’s hot thing in social. Problem is they aren’t social.

When daily deals first launched, hitting the minimum participants to “activate” the deal wasn’t a given and that made them social as people would have to bring friends in to get things going. Years later Groupon, LivingSocial and other leaders have too many users to have to worry about “qualifying” thus the social aspect is gone & deals have become glorified coupons that you just buy into.

Now don’t get me wrong. I may have critiqued the relevancy of daily deals in the past and am now joining others in questioning their business viability but I don’t doubt the potential of deals as a gateway for discovery, and value service to consumers – they just need a little network power to get to exciting. So as we watch Facebook prepare to roll out its deal offering, Google move into social & deals and Groupon and LivingSocial battle for control of the current market, I thought I’d take a crack at what the future could look like.

Deals are better when they’re done together [rhyming not intended]

Late one evening, a few weeks back I got a text from a friend (let’s call her “Sally”) asking if I wanted to jump in on a LivingSocial deal for White Water Rafting. Sally, knowing I raft frequently, wanted to put together a group trip and saw the deal as as great opportunity. To me that’s exactly what daily deals are for: great offers on services that people were considering, and now have a tipping point to take action on — together.

Problem is, it was 10pm, the deal expired in 2 hours and we all had to commit to make it work – no one wanted to take the first plunge and the deal was missed.

Risk stops purchases; but what if you could remove it?

What if, rather than a mass text, followed by a lot of hoping and messaging back, my friend, had been able to set the whole thing up as a group deal contingent on her network participating:

- Sally decides this deal is for her, looks at the calendar, picks an available date, creates an event and invites 20 people who she’d like to have show up… It hits their email, sms, facebook wall or twitter handle, their call.

-The threshold on the deal is also set based on the offer type. For white water rafting its one full boat – 6 heads. More can join but without 6 the deal is not on. Other services could have a threshold as low as 2 for a spa day or 4 for dinner out, but always a group.

-Sally’s friends get an alert that there’s a deal expiring in a few hours with the right details – the time, the place and the cost. Since they already have accounts they can confirm it right from their iphones but there’s no risk, the deal only goes if the threshold is hit.

-5 people are excited to try out rafting and convince #6 to join via a Facebook group message. The deal is on. Go Sally!

Whether it’s white water rafting, learning to rock climb, or a spa day, deals are overwhelmingly for services people do together but the current systems drive individual purchase and does nothing to address the fear of being the only one to go in.

By flipping the model back to its roots and enforcing a commitment minimum, not from all participants, but from a network of friends the risk is gone and there’s a whole new motivation for people to buy.

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Update: as of 8/26/2011 Facebook has announced they are closing down their deal service. In my opinion they had the best shot at truly creating a discovery tool by leveraging what no other deal site really has: relationships. But ultimately it’s a peripheral service and without enough attention, likely never got the legs to have a fair shot.

Combating the inevitable service issue: Building an army of advocates, or at least positive posters.

Posted on February 15, 2011 by teds

I don’t work in the flower industry, don’t know much about the business (beyond how to order products at least) but when Teleflora made a Facebook post with a customer service email address the day after Valentine’s Day, the reason why was pretty obvious – something had gone wrong – something which was making people very, very upset.

Of course anyone working in ecommerce, or any corporation, could have told you there would be problems. Tens of millions of flower orders , dozens of companies, and just 18 or so hours to get them all there on time (but not too early), it’s only logical that some orders would fail within the process… Some complaints were inevitable.

And some level of complaints are inevitable for almost all b2c companies. No matter how perfect the process is, something will fail at some point and whether it’s the fault of the company or something entirely out of their hands, like the weather, it’s all going to come back on them, and these days back to social media. So knowing that something bad will happen, it’s up to us as marketers/ social strategists to insure that when problems come up we have the right plans to respond, but also that they don’t dominate the conversation or become the purpose of our page. We need to be more than just support channels .

Going back to my Teleflora example (and to be clear and not just pick out one company, the same issue is happening with ProFlowers and others that I checked), something is missing – balance. On the pages of most flower brands I visited just about everything was negative and support related. If these companies had happy customers (and I know they do because I am one) they were nowhere to be found and likely for good reason, no one had asked them to join up and share.

My suggestion to flower business earlier in the week was to provide an insert with orders for people to evangelize their great orders (or their bad ones, a review is what it is). All it takes is a simple note to remind people to comment, to tell them where you are, and out of the millions, thousands or even of just hundreds of customers you touch, you’ll get some balance… You’ll get light advocates.

Take this a step further, build a social program that encourages fan participation before the issue and you’ll be far more prepared when one does strike. This is where best practices really kick in – buying fans in masse with discounts, coupons and giveaways is easy and gets numbers, but successfully cultivating them takes a great deal more than good offers, it takes useful content, engaging directly around posts other than support, even how the business goes to market, the policies and programs that you have and how your fans react to them. But if you can build a dialogue and a regular flow (and yes, this is possible for even seemingly mundane brands) then you have moderate advocates on and around to help when there are negatives, to explain that there is a good to the bad, and to be talking about things other than support and trouble. And of course if you really go all the way, develop that full advocacy program and engage customers to become brand evangelists, community leaders, and the like, well now you have a whole force of people to balance and even better, aid.

Now don’t get me wrong, the issue customers are having with their flower orders are certainly very real and need a response, not to be buried or hidden by a flood of off topic discussions. Transparency is good, real responses are what matter. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have both – it is again a balance of what your social media channels do for you and your customers.

As for the support side, we all know it isn’t easy, or cheap, but it is something which companies tend to get… and here, the flower companies are doing a good job of responding 1:1, giving direct email addresses, and all of the other support processes you’d hope for when customers are upset and support lines are backed up with callers… they may not be perfect but they’re on it for this part. But while the support side is going well, when all people see is bad, they get more upset, the assume nothing is going right, and they lose the benefit of peer to peer support or comments to turn too.

And that’s why you need your fans to know, connect and be involved with your social media presence now, when things are good. Social media is not just about offers and sales generation, not just a support system, but when used right, it can be a dialogue platform to get insights, have the right discussions that curtail or stop issues early on, and yes, be a place where people share all the great things your product / service / brand are doing that may them advocates and repeat customers.

Not going to respond, don’t bother playing in social media

Posted on September 17, 2009 by teds

The astonishing growth of Social Media can be attributed solely to the relationships that are developed through it. Indeed while social may have the term media attached, media is a far second to the social component. Thus when companies get involved in social they must remember that success comes only from a two way communication.

Coming into the social space is not a selective engagement; the second a twitter account is established, a facebook page launched or a video uploaded, customers gain a new channel by which to respond and respond they do. Unfortunately many organizations in their rush to get on the social train forget the purpose of social and therefore abuse and ultimately suffer as a result of their participation.
With twitter it is common for companies to setup shop and blast out special offers and discounts but remain silent when a question is asked. Instead of benefiting from a relationship these companies look clueless and add to the frustration that their customers already often have about reaching someone for help. On the other hand companies who respond are often praised and certainly preferred. People on social expect companies to act much like their personal contacts.

Getting it right is not a difficult task. In an ideal world both marketing and customer service should utilize the same social channels to sell and serve but even that is not always required. So long as someone with information, awareness and a list of support phone numbers can do a great job in connecting customers back to whatever it is they are looking for. Responding to questions asked directly is the first step but over time reaching out into conversations to provide assistance not only helps build a relationship with one customer but can quickly add to the overall visibility and positive impression of the organization. Companies who “get it” commonly see comments about how great their service is, even if phone or email users may have another opinion.

While acquisition marketing is a benefit of social, it’s wrong to make it the only focus or even the main focus for most companies. The true value of social as so many great case studies have indicated is in engagement, brand visibility and loyalty. Thus while offers are definitely successful it is ultimately about using social to reach out and be reached that brings real results. For companies who lack the resources, or simply are unwilling to go from talking to a customer to talking with a customer social is the wrong vehicle. As a customer of many businesses we all know that going without any response is one of the fastest ways to be turned away from a business. On the other hand the companies that get it, connect and are on our level are the ones we trust, chose and pass along to our networks.

Customer service… when done right it is social marketing. When done wrong it’s just a disaster.

Posted on April 8, 2009 by teds

Zappos has made one of the biggest web businesses because of their customer support and commitment to insuring the product is right. Whether a call takes a minute or an hour their agent is looked at the same; returns are gladly taken and refunds are no issue. For many companies however, customer service remains about minimizing calls, call time and basically avoiding the customer after the sales funnel ends. With so much cost associated in providing a high level of service it can seem like a silly decision to make but ignoring service comes at a big loss and as Zappos has shown, providing it comes at an even bigger gain.
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When personalization is done wrong the result’s far outweigh the benefits

Posted on February 9, 2009 by teds

If you’ve read this blog before you know just how big of a believer I am in personalization and tailoring content to match the user especially when it comes to email marketing. However as it’s become easier and easier to send get messages out there I’ve started to notice downside to personalization, a lack of thought or logic if you will that’s leaving a bad taste in the mouth of consumers and something every company needs to be aware off — I’m talking about personalization gone wrong.

The benefit from personalization and segmentation in general comes from matching a customer or user with something that’s relevant to them which causes them to find the right match and buy more. While it may seam harmless to match things incorrectly from time to time, it’s anything but. Case in point, in a 2007 survey by ChoiceStream, nearly 40 percent of respondents indicated that they were “less willing to return to sites with poor recommendations.” (ChoiceStream PDF)

But even strong numbers haven’t kept some companies from making bad decisions about how to personalize their marketing messages. A few days ago I recieved what amounts to perfect a example of a personalization mistake…

The problem…

As you can see the above email is from Harry & David and is about Valentine’s Day (subject line reads: Ladies: Here’s the Way to Your Man’s Heart! FREE delivery on select gifts for Valentine’s Day!). Now I’m a huge fan of the brand myself and would buy into their product gladly. Problem is “Ted” isn’t short for anything female yet the email is written entirely for women… Whoops! Now Harry & David may not have used any advanced segmentation tactics to drive this email versus but the concept is still at heart about personalizing, even if the personalization was done to their entire list.

On the surface this makes a lot of sense and someone in their marketing team made a great suggestion that they focus an under marketed to Valentine’s Day segment [women] knowing their product is a hit with many men. But since Harry & David doesn’t know my gender there’s a serious gap. Very serious.

One could say that Harry & David may have a heavily female list, they may have even surveyed their list to confirm this. But even if 90% of the recipients were a fit for this message the remaining 10% surely weren’t pleased and definitely weren’t likely to act on the message. Assuming most merely deleted it you’d have a definite marketing loss and in all reality there was likely a nice jump in optout rates as well; afterall, what guy wants to get an email for women. And of course only having 10% of the list be male is very, very unlikely.

The solution…

Gender targeting is a great idea especially for Valentine’s and other peak holiday seasons but it has to be done properly. While some companies try to use first name to sort out gender that’s dicey (think of the names Alex, Chris, Toni/Tony, etc…). In all reality the only way to get close to accurate is to ask the customer. While most signups don’t have any place to gather this data, Harry & David’s does as they already require all sorts of data including name and address. Adding gender to that sign up page would be a smart idea if they want to continue segmented emails.

For those who don’t have a long form email sign up (which is not something most sites do) there are still opportunities to capture gender or other details through micro-profiling. If you aren’t familiar with it, micro-profiling is the concept of gathering data one or two pieces at a time over a customer’s lifetime. So on day one the customer signs up for email either directly or through an order and on day five you capture their gender through a poll, a short questionnaire, a profile update, a second order or any other means and add it back into the master profile. Even if you don’t want to build a robust profile, asking for some basics once can be enough to establish core segment groups.

But sometimes getting the data you want just doesn’t fit either because of technology challenges or out of fear that the customer won’t be pleased with you asking. In this case you simply have to make the wise decision to skip visibly segmenting along that line. For example, if Harry & David had realized that they didn’t have my gender (perhaps they have it for other users) and sent me a split email geared at men or women individually or a single email that just didn’t talk about gender it would have fit. Lift for the female segment may have been lower but toss outs and confusion from the male segment would go away as would the impact of optouts, brand reputation, etc…

Not personalizing when you can’t do it right is the right call.

When things do go wrong be ready to act…

No matter how you capture data there will always be some number of people who get the wrong information. This could be a result of a database error, a user error (we don’t always check the right boxes afterall) or something else. When it does happen what matters is that you can identify and address it. If a customer calls or emails your support department to complain they just got an email about Women’s clothing and they’re a guy be sure customer support can fix their profile on the spot. Too many companies stick their database in a vault so deep that the customer’s only response to getting the wrong message is to opt out completely and that’s a much bigger loss for you than for them,

Personalization is a great tool for any internet marketer and the results are amazing, when done right. The mistake we’re all guilty of is wanting to do more than really makes sense and the email I got is a great example of that. Nice creative, good messaging, wrong data and when the message is this visible the mistakes aren’t missed.

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Understanding your customer in the new world

Posted on January 27, 2009 by teds

It’s easy to blame economy for decreases traffic, leads and sales but is that really a fair assortment or are you missing the bigger picture and perhaps the opportunity for growth? There’s no doubt that consumers are spending less these days and no doubt that their cut backs have impacted both the offline and online worlds but the economy is not the only thing changing and impacting spending and for many companies it’s time to face a reality that’s a whole lot scarier than an economic downturn – it’s time to realize the model has changed. Whether sales are falling down or rocketing up, it’s time to understand your customers in a way you may not have done before. It’s time to make decisions based on the reality of the new world and not just assume that a greater impact is at play in changes.

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“Super smartphones” have come — it’s time to give up the timeshare marketing strategy.

Posted on January 7, 2009 by teds

Admittedly I’m a bit late to the game having just moved from a Samsung Blackjack to the iphone but then again, with over 1.75 million iphones sold in Q4 of last year, there are a lot of people who are late to the game and a lot more coming along. In any event there’s no doubt that the iphone revolution and really the smartphone revolution is here, heck you could even say it’s already behind us. There’s more than 14 million iphones on the market and tens of millions of other super smartphones out there (super smartphones being new age phones that combine email and other smartphone features with advanced web browsing, multimedia and other computer like features), yet so many businesses seem to continue marching on like consumers aren’t able to access a world of data right in front of them. It’s time for that to stop.

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Setting expectations early stops problems later.

Posted on November 26, 2008 by teds

As I mentioned in my last post, I took a lengthy train ride this week from the Bay Area to LA and will be returning in a few days on the same train. While I’ll spare you the full review I posted this morning to a travel website, the ride was lacking to put it mildly [that I wrote my other posts on the floor of the arcade train should say enough]. However there was no reason I ever got on the train or at least not in a way that let me feel so disappointed as to vent to Amtrak and to the world via multiple posts to multiple sites.

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