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Consumers Call for Transparency in Use of Private Information

private signNearly nine out of 10 consumers (87%) don’t believe that companies are adequately protecting their private information. That statistic comes from a new survey of consumers between the ages of 20 and 40 in the United States and the United Kingdom that was conducted earlier this year by Accenture.

A Lack of Transparency Concerns Consumers

Overall, 70% of the 2,000+ survey respondents don’t believe that businesses are being completely honest and transparent in disclosing how they use the personal information that they collect about their customers and visitors to their web properties. Furthermore, 39% believe that their personal information is being sold despite what businesses report to the contrary.

Survey respondents were asked how they want companies to be transparent with consumers in regards to how they use personal information. The majority want companies to send the information via email. The overall response breakdown follows:

  • Companies should send an with email details and updates on how personal information is used = 53%
  • Companies should always offer a way to opt-out of new data usage plans = 49%
  • When updates are made to data usage, companies should get approval from consumers before using their personal information again = 40%
  • Companies should publish all consumer data usage details on their websites = 29%
  • Companies should send text messages with details and updates on how personal information is used = 9%
  • Companies should call via phone with details and updates on how personal information is used = 7%

Leveraging Data Usage Transparency as an Opportunity

Based on the Accenture study findings, the majority of consumers are willing to accept that companies will track their online behavior and store their personal information in order to present them with more relevant offers. However, their perceptions of how that data is used represents an opportunity for brands to leverage transparency to demonstrate a commitment to corporate social responsibility (as well as for marketing purposes).

Companies that raise the bar in terms of disclosing how they use personal information can improve their brand reputations in consumers’ minds. At this point, consumers need to be educated in layman’s terms. Presenting a lengthy page of disclosures and disclaimers isn’t the type of transparency that consumers want. Go ahead and publish the necessary legal language, but go a step further by making it very easy for consumers to quickly and easily learn how you collect information and what it is used for. It’s a critical step in differentiating your brand from competitors and building brand trust that leads to brand loyalty and brand advocacy.

Image: Neil Gould

Email or Direct Mail? The Answer is Both

royal mail marketreach mail and email infographicA marketing plan that incorporates email but leaves out direct mail (or vice versa) is a marketing plan that will not drive maximum results. That’s because consumers perceive that email and direct mail are for different things according to a study by Royal Mail MarketReach.

Consumers view email as a fast and informal form of communication that they can respond to quickly, but they view direct mail as attention-grabbing and informative. In other words, direct mail gives a better impression of a brand than email according to this study.

Click on the image to see all of the details in a data visualization from Royal Mail MarketReach. Following are some of the highlights from the report that brand marketers shouldn’t miss:

Did you know that consumers who are considered to be digitally active are actually more likely to take a digital action after reading a piece of direct mail? According to this study, 86% have connected with a business after receiving direct mail from that business, and 54% have engaged with the brand on social media after receiving direct mail from the brand. A total of 43% of direct mail recipients have downloaded something offered by the brand sender after reading the mailer, and 57% believe that mail makes them feel more valued than email does.

The Royal Mail MarketReach study reveals that companies can increase consumer action, sales, and brand loyalty when they integrate direct mail and email marketing. In fact, 51% of consumers want to receive both email messages and direct mail from the companies that they buy from. At a time when most brand marketers are shifting budget dollars away from direct mail, which is expensive, the report reveals that doing so could be a big mistake. Not only do more than one in two consumers want to receive both email and direct mail from companies but another 17% only want to receive direct mail. If all of your budget dollars are going to email marketing, then you’re missing a 17% segment of the audience and you’re not delivering everything that another 51% wants.

Today, direct mail can be extremely effective for the simple reason that the number of companies sending direct mail on a daily basis has dropped so much over the past 10 years. Instead of struggling to get noticed in the mailbox, companies now have to struggle to get noticed in the email inbox. That means the door is wide open for your brand to get noticed with a great direct mail offer and design.

Click on the link at the beginning of this article to download the full report to see all of the study details.

Image: Royal Mail MarketReach

3 Biggest Mobile Marketing Mistakes Brand Marketers Make in 2014

dartboard missAll brand marketers know how important mobile is to the future success of their brands, products, services, and companies, but many of them are making one or more of the three biggest mobile marketing mistakes.

In 2014, these three mistakes are causing many brands to hit obstacles that are impeding their growth progress. If you’re making these mobile marketing mistakes, then you need to recognize them and make changes immediately.

1. Going Cheap on Mobile

Launching your brand effectively into the mobile space so it has a chance to gain a strong position that leads to a sustainable competitive advantage requires an adequate investment in time, money, and resources. The three things you need to be prepared to invest in if you want to maximize your results are:

  • People: Without the right talent, your mobile marketing successes will be limited. The competition will easily be able to outpace your brand.
  • Tools: Without the right tools to launch campaigns, track progress, benchmark competitors, and integrate your mobile marketing with the rest of your marketing plan, you’ll be throwing darts at a dartboard while wearing a blindfold.
  • Experimentation: Without the right testing to learn what works for your brand and your target audience, you’ll be guilty of creating barriers to your own success.

2. Using One-Size-Fits-All Strategies on Mobile

Your mobile marketing strategy is unique. Don’t try to fit your online marketing strategy to the mobile environment, because it won’t work. Saying mobile and online are the same is like saying radio and television are the same. They aren’t. Consider platform-centric strategies they seek opportunities for integration and economies of scale.

3. Succumbing to Shiny New Toy Syndrome

Every day a new cool tool launches that promises to improve your marketing results, give you better access to your mobile customers, and more. Many of these tools are excellent, but if you test every tool, you’ll never have time to experiment with actual marketing campaigns and programs.

Are you guilty of making any of these mobile marketing mistakes? Now is the time to admit it and adjust, because 2014 is already half over. In 2015, companies that are still making these mistakes will be left behind while the competition rules the mobile market.

Image: Tomek G

The New Retail Experience

barcode scanner retail price checkingToday’s retail experience is very different from just a few years ago. The integration of mobile into the retail experience has expanded, and the relationship between consumers and brands happens as much through the physical environments inside retail stores as it does in a consumer’s hand through a mobile device.

As a customer stands in a retail store, he is faced with a myriad of brands. That hasn’t changed. However, price checking, coupon searching, and finding better deals at other stores are mobile activities that happen at the shelf today. These mobile activities give consumers more control in the retail setting. In other words, it takes more than foot traffic to generate sales.

In fact, many consumers today visit stores to check out products in person with no intention to actually make purchases in those retail stores. They’ll wait to buy until they search for the best deal on the internet using their mobile device (sometimes while they’re still in the store) or on their computer when they get back home. It’s called showrooming, and back in 2012, 43% of U.S. adults were already doing it. You can bet that percentage is much higher in 2014.

Furthermore, consumers are far less likely to “settle” on a specific selection or price offered in a brick-and-mortar store. Why settle when a few taps on your smartphone or clicks on your computer can find exactly what you want in seconds? The days of capturing “convenience” sales from consumers who don’t have the time or energy to search multiple stores to find what they’re looking for are over.

The trick for brand marketers is connecting with consumers while they’re in stores, but it starts long before consumers ever set foot into a physical store. It starts by being the brand that consumers are already connected to on their mobile devices. Deals, coupons, and price comparisons are all short-term, transactional mobile activities, but if a brand can transcend the short-term and connect with consumers for the long-haul, the entire retail experience will improve for consumers. Retailers have been tracking in-store customers by their cell phones for some time because the opportunities to analyze and learn from consumers’ in-store behaviors, coupled with the potential to deliver the right offers to them via their mobile devices while they’re in specific parts of the store, represents a huge opportunity.

With mobile payments and wearable technology making mobile brand marketing prioritization even more important, savvy brand marketers are already entrenched in a “mobile-always” strategy. Are you?

Image: Johan Larsson