Looking for the diamonds in the data

When dealing in data analytics, organizations don’t care about individual numbers such as birth dates or social security numbers. They do care about customer habits; they want to know things like how old they are, their annual household income, what their buying habits are, and things like that.

It’s not because they want to do anything bad with that data; quite the contrary. The more companies know about people, the better they can market to them…the better they can anticipate their needs and wishes, and not spam them with stuff for which they have absolutely no use.

The responsible use of personal data benefits everyone. For instance, when customers shop online sites like Amazon.com, they’re already seeing this kind of behavior in use. After they click on an item, chances are the next window says something like, “People like you also liked,” and there’s a list of other products that are tailored to their demographic. This is not an invasion of their privacy; they’ve agreed to provide certain information to the vendor, and allowed them to use it to market more effectively to them.

And every time they go to the grocery store and swipe their loyalty card, they’re allowing the grocer to know exactly which products they’re buying, how often, and what their shopping patterns are. In return, they get discounts every week off their grocery bill.

Responsible marketers and vendors need to do a better job of conveying the benefits of sharing information. This is increasingly important as the U.S. government considers a “do not track” bill, which would allow consumers to easily say “no thanks” to online marketers who want to follow their click-trails.

Such a law makes perfect sense, but there is an inherent need to better communicate to consumers the advantages associated with making use of the information they share with retailers and vendors, making it abundantly clear that…no…they don’t care about them as individuals. But they do care about them as people.