Friday, January 22, 2021

Personalization: Where is the line between convenient, creepy, and concerning?

Every company today is focused on collecting data and building tools that help them understand their customers better.  Whether it is purchasing third-party data, tracking engagement with a website, app, campaign, or brand, or building tools that aggregate as much data as possible to best understand and communicate with clients, it is something every company strives to figure out.  And all of this in an effort to best market to you, the customer, in a way that resonates with you.  But in this effort to personalize every digital world you step into, where is the line between convenient, creepy, and concerning?

Working in technology, each time we implement a new tool or feature, we ask ourselves: what will the experience be for clients?  What data do we want to capture?  And how quickly do we want to turn that data into insights?  But the degree to which that is taken varies for companies, and depending on that, can bounce between convenient, creepy, and concerning.  When you search for a restaurant and ones close to you that you might like based on past preferences show up - that's convenient.  When you open a social media app and start seeing ads for things you feel like you were only thinking about - that's creepy.  When you search for a news article, and only see links to pieces by people who think like you - that's concerning.

As leaders and potential digital marketers, it is our responsibility to think about the implications of our digital actions, and how they might impact our clients and the world around us.

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