A transition from data surveillance to invited personalisation

It seems coun­ter­in­tu­itive to every­thing that brands have been work­ing to achieve in their mar­ket­ing strate­gies over the past decade, but today the best way to win a cus­tomer is through a sim­ple invi­ta­tion.

Busi­ness­es are walk­ing a tightrope when it comes to cus­tomer trust and loy­al­ty, fol­low­ing a two-year peri­od where dig­i­tal pro­fi­cien­cy has risen, and a wealth of choice is being unearthed. Con­sumers can afford to be more fick­le than ever before, and they are not nec­es­sar­i­ly will­ing to offer sec­ond chances.

This lack of tol­er­ance may come from poor ser­vice pro­vi­sion, ful­fil­ment or cus­tomer ser­vice. But more and more, it comes from an eerie feel­ing of being watched – almost stalked. Such is the scope of data ana­lyt­ics and AI in the present day.
Cus­tomers have had enough.

“Data sur­veil­lance and intru­sion has run its course and exclu­sive offers are mak­ing a resur­gence for high­er prof­its and bet­ter data,” explains Jake Weath­er­ly, CEO of SheerID, a com­pa­ny that, for the past 10 years, has explored the role of data rela­tion­ships to help elim­i­nate fric­tion and fraud, and to cham­pi­on the impor­tance of per­son­alised mar­ket­ing.

He adds: “As con­sumers take more inter­est in who they trust with their per­son­al data, SheerID pro­vides mar­keters with a new approach where they can cre­ate an exchange by giv­ing gat­ed, per­son­alised offers to con­sumer com­mu­ni­ties that share a core attribute, such as their life stage or pro­fes­sion.”

This con­cept has evolved from the the­o­ry that con­sumers are actu­al­ly hap­py to share per­son­al, zero-par­ty data, but only when being offered some­thing of real val­ue in return. By tru­ly get­ting to know the indi­vid­ual, brands can offer cus­tomers a more per­son­al invi­ta­tion to what they’ve said they want, rather than some­thing based on pre­dic­tions of what they might want.

“In terms of dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing, we’re enter­ing a future where ‘invit­ed per­son­al­i­sa­tion’ will become com­mon­place. That is, one where the con­sumer rais­es their hand and know­ing­ly opts into an offer they want,” Weath­er­ly affirms. “This approach dif­fers sig­nif­i­cant­ly from tra­di­tion­al forms of per­son­al­i­sa­tion where the mar­keter secret­ly tracks the prospect online and tries to add data and attrib­ut­es with­out con­sent.”

Tak­ing a more sub­tle, patient and trans­par­ent approach may seem counter pro­duc­tive to com­pa­nies that have had con­cepts like ‘big data opti­mi­sa­tion’ shout­ed at them for so long. But the evi­dence clear­ly shows that invit­ed per­son­al­i­sa­tion is the way for­ward. Con­sumers have expressed a will­ing­ness to be invit­ed, rather than stalked, and brands must trust in this method if they are to instil trust in return.

Weath­er­ly con­tin­ues: “If they haven’t already, mar­keters need to begin shift­ing away from a depen­dence on third-par­ty data. Not only is it noto­ri­ous­ly inac­cu­rate, but changes to Apple’s iOS and Google Chrome will make it vir­tu­al­ly impos­si­ble to run cam­paigns based on third-par­ty cook­ies mov­ing for­ward.”

This tran­si­tion doesn’t have to be a solo pur­suit. SheerID has been help­ing brands gath­er zero-par­ty data through ver­i­fi­ca­tion of poten­tial cus­tomers for more than a decade. Each indi­vid­ual is invit­ed to pro­vide their details, not only to ver­i­fy their stand­ing as a tar­get cus­tomer, but to ensure that they, in return, only receive rec­om­men­da­tions or mar­ket­ing cam­paigns that they have already put their hand up for.

This enhance­ment of con­sumer con­trol in the provider-buy­er rela­tion­ship has already become an expec­ta­tion for many. Peo­ple want per­son­al­i­sa­tion, but on their terms. And it can all start with a sim­ple invi­ta­tion.

Weath­er­ly con­cludes: “Data gath­ered direct­ly from con­sumers allows mar­keters to under­stand them on a deep­er lev­el, and estab­lish­es the dif­fer­ence between iden­ti­fi­ca­tion (what demo­graph­ic they fall into) and iden­ti­ty (who they actu­al­ly are).

“When you steer away from stalk­ing con­sumers online and adopt this approach instead, then we have already seen that you can build a longer-term rela­tion­ship tru­ly built on trans­paren­cy and trust.”

For more infor­ma­tion, please vis­it sheerid.com/zero-party-data

Pro­mot­ed by SheerID