Consumers Are Aggressive When It Comes to Privacy

The Mot du Jour: Consensual Marketing

Despite a growing number of privacy protection laws, consumers are increasingly taking the issue into their own hands with actions that signal it may be time to alter your marketing efforts.

Despite a growing number of privacy protection laws, consumers are increasingly taking the issue into their own hands with actions that signal it may be time to alter your marketing efforts.

At least that is the case in the U.S., according to a survey that shows a 30 per cent increase in the number of individuals taking privacy-assertive actions.

Canadian companies should take heart, however.Another survey of corporate attitudes about privacy showed that Canadian companies care more about privacy than their American counterparts: 61 per cent of surveyed Canadian companies linked “good privacy practices” to customer trust and brand loyalty, compared to only 17 per cent of U.S. companies.

The U.S. study of consumer concerns about private data does offer valuable insights for businesses. Among the findings:

At Issue	2003	1999
Asked company to remove name and address from marketing lists	87%	58%
Refused to give data because it was too personal or not necessary	83%	78%
Asked company not to sell or provide name and address to another company	81%	53%
Didn’t use a company because they were unclear how the data is used	60%	54%
Asked to see the information about them in company records.	15%	18%

The message from these figures is that smart companies are altering their privacy policies to make them more meaningful to their customers and are switching their marketing to consensual programs from consumer targeting.

But to get a fuller sense of your customer’s attitudes, it is wise to survey them to get a handle on how they feel about your current privacy policies, marketing efforts and any new information-collection and marketing campaigns you are considering.

“Getting to Know all About You” When it comes to marketing, you can take the shotgun approach and mail  everything, or you can offer your customers an a la carte selection. The latter choice is consensual marketing. Take a hint from American Express of Canada. The company asked its cardholders to select either, mailings that interested them, no mailings at all, or all mailings. From those who responded, the company learned what products and services they were most interested in and effectively received consent to send solicitations in those categories. The idea is that the cardholders are then more receptive to the mailings, actually read them, and consequently, are more likely to respond.

However, don’t worry. As a Canadian company, chances are you’re doing pretty well already. The survey comparing Canadian and U.S. companies, which was commissioned by the Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner, found that:

• Privacy preferences of customers are captured by 79 per cent of Canadian companies, compared to 53 per cent of U.S. companies;
• Eighty-two percent of Canadian companies have privacy-training programs and 71 per cent have privacy-awareness activities for new employees, compared to just 50 per cent and 43 per cent in the U.S.;
• About three-quarters of Canadian companies assigned a senior executive as their privacy officer, and those individuals were twice as likely to be assigned on a full-time basis. In the U.S. only half the companies have a privacy officer;
• Nearly 70 per cent of Canadian companies have a policy regarding surveillance and computer monitoring in the workplace, compared with just 13 per cent of U.S. companies. U.S. businesses, however, are more likely to give their employees a say in how their data is collected, and
• Canadian companies are more likely to let consumers “opt out” over the secondary use and sharing of their personal information.

The bottom line: Canadian companies appear to view privacy programs as a way to improve relations with customers while American companies view them as a way to comply with the law and avoid litigation.