How Will Increasing Privacy Concerns Affect Your Marketing?

Earlier this year, Facebook sparked controversy with the unveiling of a dubious privacy policy from its enormously popular messaging app, WhatsApp. The new terms and conditions weren’t very clear and were misinterpreted by many to mean that WhatsApp would start sharing data with its parent company. Facebook had to clarify that all conversations would remain encrypted and that the only new data to be collected will be users’ interactions with businesses. 

But this clarification fell on deaf ears. Within 72 hours, popular WhatsApp alternative Telegram enjoyed a massive 28 million new users. Another encrypted rival app Signal grew its weekly sign ups from a commendable 246,000 to a dizzying 8.8 million in the shadow of Facebook’s announcement. 

This exodus occurred in the UK and the European Union, even though WhatsApp’s new privacy policy doesn’t apply to these areas, thanks to the safeguarding of the GDPR. European users still abandoned WhatsApp after a perceived compromise of privacy that doesn’t affect them. 87% of surveyed American and British Internet users said that there aren’t enough safeguards to protect their personal data online. Concerns over data use are growing with each year. Collecting and handling data the way it was done a decade ago today will lead to an enormous drop in revenue for businesses. 

Marketers are right to be concerned. They must walk the pesky tightrope between data-driven customer personalisation and data privacy. It’s imperative to examine the knock-on effect of growing information confidentiality could have on your marketing. 

Data transparency in marketing

Now more than ever, you should be transparent to your customers and users. You need to tell them in advance what data you collect and how it will be used. Honesty is the best policy here. If you’re asking them to submit their contact details for a free download, let them know if they will be contacted for marketing purposes. As marketers, we don’t crave data for the sake of it. We need it for personalisation and segmentation for a user’s convenience, so it’s important to make sure they understand this. 

Many companies have already started to minimise the amount of information they collect. One of the ways to do this is to reduce your need for personally identifiable data. By being smart about data collection, you save space and effort that would otherwise be spent on data management and analysis. You also leave your organisation less exposed to hackers.

Removal of cookies

Last year, Google announced that they would be removing all third party cookies from its Chrome browser by 2022. Safari and Firefox browsers started doing this in 2013 and no longer host any. This is a trend that is likely to carry over to other browsers over the years so prepare for its fallout now. 

What does this mean exactly? Just to clarify, first party cookies are the ones directly from the company whose website they appear on. These help remember things like log in details, passwords, etc. and won’t be affected by the change. However, a third party cookie is one that is from a company that isn’t the owner of the website domain.

If you use a cookie to track activity from one website on to another, (like that gorgeous shirt ad that follows you around the Internet until you cave in and buy it) start preparing. Something like Facebook’s pixel will fall under this.

What happens now? Google will look at replacing their cookies with The Privacy Sandbox. They will look at using anonymous data to make targeted groups for advertisers to use. Advertisers will then provide feedback to improve the service. 

Differing levels of privacy

You’ve probably met people who fall into one of the following camps: “I don’t want a company harvesting my personal data to sell to advertisers,” and “I don’t care what a company does with my personal data – I don’t have anything to hide.” A one-size-fits-all privacy solution for these two groups just doesn’t exist. That’s why you need to offer a variety of settings for users to choose themselves. 

It's likely that you’ve also seen cookie requests that pop up after landing on a website to offer you a menu of customisation options. Frequently, they’re categorised into the following: necessary, functional, performance and advertising cookies. Each category will list its individual cookies below and users can turn them off at either the cookie level or the category level. This is such a common feature that many visitors expect it on all websites. There’s no denying that customers appreciate having control over the use of cookies. 

As with most changes and new trends in the marketing universe, the best way to ride this out is by being flexible. Organisations should learn to adapt to the change, rather than fight. Ultimately, online services must meet the users’ expectations to succeed. The growth in conscious digital privacy will not go away, so look at how your company can collect and manage data with the highest privacy concerns in place.