Whenever someone visits websites, sends emails or fills up online surveys, they leave digital footprints. You can leave your footprints without being aware. A web server could log your IP address like 192.168.1.1 and location to study more about your activity online. Your posts and impressions on social media are also digital footprints.
The higher your engagement with social media, the larger your digital footprint. Marketers aim to give the best experience to their audience through personalisation. They collect data from you to provide a personalised experience.
People are waking up to the fact that spy agencies, companies, and search engines have a detailed history of their activities, particularly in the digital sphere. Data Privacy is the need of the hour. Companies are trying to find a balance between privacy and personalisation.
How Companies Collect Data?
When companies collect data, you do not even know that they track you. They collect data about your location, pattern, demographics, and preferences. An internet cookie stores information about your IP address, your login information, and page time.
Cookies can tell companies about the number of site visits and pages viewed. They allow companies to personalise pages and allow visitors to stay logged in. Companies also collect information about your location through GPS tracking.
This data can help when your device is lost. However, companies use this data to send you offers and promotions when you consider buying a product. Companies also use email tracking to collect data to craft strategies to win customers.
AI in Personalised Marketing
Many users around the world check their push notifications many times a day. Users find too many notifications annoying. AI identifies patterns of behaviour and sends alerts at the right time. AI also helps to filter site visitors and make recommendations based on their interests. It collects information from site visitors based on their impressions and groups site visitors with similar interests and allows you to provide a unique user experience to different people.
Content personalisation is easy with AI, as the machines read all your text, metadata, length, and format to classify your content. Then the system determines what type of content to recommend for a user based on his interests. For content strategy, you have to look for the best digital marketing agency that provides professional SEO services in your city.
AI chatbots give uninterrupted customer service. Companies also use AI algorithms to adjust pricing based on different factors like supply, demand, customer location, and weather.
Risks of Personalisation & Data Collection
Mutual trust and commitment are essential prerequisites for data collection. If you provide too intrusive ads or irrelevant ads, your customers will leave you for your competitors. Companies selling data to third parties without notification break the law. They also will lose customer faith in the brand and lose revenue. When you use every piece of information at your disposal to make recommendations, they feel being under surveillance all the time.
Collecting more information also has an impact on your decision-making skills. With more data coming in, the information becomes irrelevant to you. It takes more time to organise the information you have collected. Collecting more data also means more storage, security, and maintenance. You are also responsible for protecting personal, financial, and health information about your customers from hackers.
Be Transparent
Your customers might not be aware that you are collecting data for business purposes. And when companies notify customers about the terms and conditions, it is too hard to understand their implications. Companies like Google and Apple want to ensure data privacy. Apple came up with an update in iOS 14.5 to allow users to choose whether they agree to share their unique Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA). Similarly, Google wants to do away with third-party cookies in Chrome by 2022.
These initiatives will have an impact on personalisation. But it shows that you need to be transparent and let your customers know that you are collecting their personal information. The best digital marketing agency that provides professional SEO services can help you balance personalisation and privacy.
Data Security
You have to protect your customers’ information against several threats. Data breaches affect your brand image. Customers lose faith in a brand that has leaked their personal information to a hacker. Encryption, tokenisation, and data masking techniques help you protect your customers’ data.
Ways to Build Trust
Build Control
Giving your customers more control when you collect data builds trust. You can allow them to monitor the data you collect and what you do with them. Your customers should determine what information to give and who should receive the information.
Leverage Data
Many companies collect data that goes unused. And you might not know what data you have already. Collecting less information allows you to focus more and minimises your potential threats. Having more data increases the likelihood of a data breach. You need to leverage and maximise the efficiency of the data you already have.
Comply with the government
Compliance is crucial, as companies that break laws pay hefty fines and incur penalties. Building trust with customers through compliance with the rules is necessary. It builds your brand reputation and gives you a competitive edge.