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Marketers Need to Embrace Data Minimization

In the past, one of Marketing’s goals was to collect as much information about consumers as possible. With the increasing number of privacy laws and stricter data policies, however, having more data means more liability and responsibility. Adopting a strategy of data minimization – only collecting the information you need – will make it easier to stay in compliance and better position you to consumers.

In a recent HITMC Lightning Presentation, David Cacioppo, President & CEO at emfluence, a full service agency that also offers a marketing automation platform, highlighted how marketers need to embrace protection, privacy and consent in order to thrive in the current environment.

Laws Marketers Should Be Aware Of

There has been growing concerns on the amount of data being collected by companies and how they are using it – for good reason. By combining financial, medical and social data sources, it is possible to build an almost-comprehensive profile of each of us. This profile can then be used to market products to us (creepy, but mostly harmless), deny us employment (bad), and everything in between.

Governments have enacted laws that increase the privacy protection for consumers and forced companies to be more transparent about the data they are collecting. Cacioppo listed several in his presentation:

Instead of reading through each of the laws, Cacioppo suggested a more practical solution – ask yourself:

  • Have you requested permission to market to individuals?
  • Are you being respectful with how you are communicating with them?
  • Do consumers know how you collect and use their data? If not, why not?
  • Are you doing everything you can to protect the personal and identifiable information that you have?
  • Are you maintaining separation between personal health information (PHI) and marketing data?

Data Minimization

It wasn’t that long ago that marketers were focused on gathering as much information about site visitors, customers, prospects, and target audiences as they could. As companies collected more and more information, especially about their own users, they realized what a goldmine of information it was and looked for ways to monetize it.

Under pressure to boost financial results, some companies decided to sell their information to 3rd parties without the consent of their customers. This has become a contentious issue and a damaging one for brands. When customers find out about their data being sold, they often take their business elsewhere.

Cacioppo summarized this during his presentation: “Before this era of consumer protection, it was a marketer’s dream to have as much information as possible about the individuals in their database as possible. Just in case you might one day want to use it. Today, the more data you have, the more liability you have. Marketers need to embrace data minimization – only collect the information that you need.”

Minimizing the data you store, reduces your organization’s exposure – both legally and from a reputation standpoint. Less data means less damage should there be a breach and less burden on your security infrastructure.

One thing that should not be impacted is the success of marketing campaigns.

Success in the Age of Privacy

Despite the privacy laws and data protection guidelines that are now in place, marketers can still run effective campaigns.

“SEO, public relations, and content marketing are all campaigns that can be extremely successful with minimal persona data,” said Cacioppo. “If you are mindful of requesting consent, respecting privacy, transparent and diligent in protecting data you’ll do well.”

You can watch Cacioppo’s entire presentation here:

Fun Factoid

In Cacioppo’s lightning presentation, he showed the very first website banner ad. It was an ad from AT&T placed on hotwired.com. It generated an astounding 44% clickthru rate!

About the author

Colin Hung

Colin Hung is an award-winning Marketing Executive with more than 15yrs of healthcare and HealthIT experience. He co-founded one of the most popular healthcare chats on Twitter, #hcldr and he has been recognized as one of the “Top 50 Healthcare IT Influencers”. Colin’s work has been published in the Journal of the American College of Radiology, American Society for Healthcare Risk Managers, and Infection Control Today. He writes regularly for Healthcare Scene and here at HITMC.com. Colin is a member of #pinksock #TheWalkingGallery and is proudly HITMC. His Twitter handle is: @Colin_Hung.

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