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Privacy in Print: Good and Bad Personalization
November 30, 2007

Privacy—it’s a topic that affects us all these days. From data collection, as Richard discussed last week, to e-commerce, to… print? Yes, even print is impacted by privacy issues, especially 1:1 print. It is ironic that the greatest benefit of this marketing approach—its ability to speak personally to every recipient, by name, by demographic, and even by past purchase history—can also be its greatest detractor.

Print personalization utilizes the power of nformation collected on customer or prospect habits and demographics to increase the relevance of marketing and improve the response. But as Richard discussed regarding online data collection, just because consumers may supply information doesn’t mean they are comfortable with marketers using it any way they want. They expect the information to be used appropriately. In other words, “just because you can doesn’t mean you should.” The same thing applies in print.

Just Because You Can’t Doesn’t Mean You Should

This is one of the lessons learned early in the 1:1 printing marketplace. Just because you personalize something doesn’t mean that it will increase response. If used in appropriately, the use of overly personal data may irritate or offend recipients beyond repair.

For example, if you are marketing automobiles, it may not matter a whole lot if you show a picture of a man or a woman behind the wheel. Time and energy spent swapping out such images may be money thrown out the window. It would be much more useful to pair an image of a minivan to recipients who have children or hybrid compacts with recipients in areas known for environmental sensitivity—regardless of the whether they are men or women. It’s about relevance. Some data is relevant to the marketing offer. Some data isn’t.
But when you actually use data inappropriately, you risk doing a lot worse than just being irrelevant.

For example, say you have a database of new births. Over time, this gives you knowledge of the names of parents and the ages of their children.

What could you do with this information? You could send a postcard, saying, “Hello, Jane Smith at 144 North Gate Road, we hear that your precious daughter, Emma, is turning three today!” Instead of getting a sale, however, you are more likely to get an irate parent showing up at your office, threatening to remove your kneecaps because you have just invited a stranger to show up at the edge of his lawn with a bunch of balloons.

A better use of this data is to create relevance without over-personalizing. Say, by sending a postcard saying, “Got a Special Day Coming Up?” with  deep discount on toys  appropriate to the age of the recipient’s child. (Of course, make sure your  mailing list is    up to date before you do this. Our youngest daughter just is turning nine months old and I’m still getting coupons for newborn diapers.)

Are there times that it’s appropriate to use very personal data? Sure, when…

•    the recipient is a regular customer or has opted in to receive such documents.
•    the information is concealed within a sealed envelope.
•    or both.

A good example is a financial company that creates personalized updates on its customers’ portfolios. The customer knows the company has this information, and as long as it’s protected, receiving that information in the form of personalized updates is a strong value-added service. But putting children’s names and birthdays on a postcard or advertising that someone is on the verge of losing their house (“We hear you have an ARM that’s about to balloon your mortgage. Call us before it’s too late!”) probably isn’t.

So when thinking about personalizing a print campaign, remember that it’s not about how much data you have or how much “personalization” you can cram into the space. It’s about using the most effective information, appropriately, to increase relevance. Sometimes that might mean that the recipient knows that you are personalizing directly to them. In others, such as a discount coupon on age-appropriate toys being sent to a parent whose child is about to have a birthday, they don’t.

When it comes to personalization, privacy matters.

Posted by Heidi Tolliver Nigro on November 30, 2007 | Comments (0)