According to a report by McKinsey & Company, 71 percent of consumers expect personalized communications and offers from the brands they do business with. Not surprisingly, when that expectation of personalized marketing is not met, 76 percent of consumers say it elicits frustration. Consumers also expect privacy. In addition to wanting a personalized marketing experience, according to The Pew Research Center, more than eight in ten consumers are very or somewhat concerned about how companies handle data collected from them, which is what's used in the creation of personalized experiences.
This raises a dilemma for marketers. Consumers want the personalization that comes from the collection and smart use of data but worry about how companies leverage the information that makes personalization possible. And marketers also value personalization because it empowers more targeted, relevant, and ultimately successful campaigns that influence buying decisions and enhance customer loyalty. Done properly, personalization is a win-win for marketers and customers. But it’s a delicate, high stakes balancing act for marketers. In fact, half of all Americans opted not to use a product or service out of privacy concerns.
This dilemma applies to marketers in all industries, says Scott Clark, Director of Product Development at Urban Science™, a Detroit-based automotive consulting and technology company. “Ideally, advertisers want to be able to reach their target audience across devices, domains, on the open web and in premium environments with personalized ad experiences in a way that’s consented, authenticated, addressable, and measurable while still preserving privacy,” Clark said. “The challenge for many advertisers is figuring out how to do all of this in an AdTech supply chain that has few signals, is disparate, ever-changing and lacks transparency.”
Prioritize High-Quality Data Collection for Personalization
For marketers to solve the challenge of delivering personalized messages that resonate with consumers shopping for new cars and trucks – or any product or service – access to robust data is paramount. The good news is that consumers have expressed an openness to marketers crafting personalized messages and experiences using personal data.
That is especially true online, which is important given the fact that consumers absorb information in a multi-screen, interconnected world. “Consumers have no issue if you're stitching together an understanding of what they’re interested in based on their behaviors. The technology to do it is not perfect, but I think it allows us to stitch that understanding together in a way that's better than we ever could in the past. But to do it, you really need premium data sources,” said Carl Matter, Urban Science’s Director of Sales.
Build Consumer Trust with Consent and Transparency
The question for marketers is simple: what constitutes good data, both from a behavior and conversion standpoint? To Urban Science’s Matter, the answer is straightforward. “Good data is complete, it's stable, and it's fast because it has to be able to be resolved to a persistent ID that can then match to all the channels where you reach consumers,” Matter said.
Not surprisingly, good data is elusive. One reason is simply because it is so hard to piece together data from multiple sources to get a complete picture of a consumer’s behavior across channels. “If you're using different sources to inform different channels, you're never going to achieve that understanding marketers want of how many impressions they delivered to this person or this ID across all of these different channels,” Matter said.
Another component of good data is that it respects consumer privacy. To achieve that, marketers need both authenticated data and consent from consumers that their information can be used to personalize content and advertising. “Fully consented and authenticated data is king. And when tied to a durable, common ID or universal ID, that gives consumers control over their data while enabling it for person-based advertising,” Clark said. “It builds trust and transparency between advertisers, publishers, and consumers.”
Work with Privacy-Conscious, Data-Driven Partners
Clearly, balancing effective personalization with privacy is complex and challenging. Which is why it’s so important for advertisers to work with partners that utilize privacy-preserving techniques while still enabling addressable, people-based targeting and measurement. Urban Science has a full portfolio of offerings tailored to the unique needs of the automotive AdTech community, combining their industry-leading daily sales data with marketing solutions to deliver the right message to the right audience.
This makes it incumbent on marketers to ask specific questions about the data potential partners use. Direct mail and email marketers, for instance, need to know the provenance of the data being offered and whether it has necessary marketing permissions. Digital advertisers need to scrutinize the granularity of data sources and how they collectively enable personalization. “The more data points you can add, the more you can get down to the person,” Matter said.
Understanding what constitutes good data that simultaneously protects privacy and bolsters personalization is an essential first step for marketers. Leveraging it to run effective campaigns means finding and working with partners who can guide them. “It’s imperative for advertisers to work with trustworthy partners that have solved for this and give them a cheat code,” Clark said.
Ultimately, the effectiveness of marketing is about delivering value to consumers eager to receive it. Personalization and privacy don’t have to be contradictory forces working against one another. With the right data and data partnerships, marketers can simultaneously respect privacy and personalize messages and offers that consumers want.
