In his recent article, Congress asks Embarq about Selling Customer Info, posted today, AP writer David Twiddy explains why Congress is looking deeper in the online subscriber tracking activities performed by Embarq with association NebuAd, a company focused on tracking subscriber visits for marketing and advertising purposes. The allegations discusses that Congress wants to know if, in fact, they were tracking subscriber web activity, if they notified these customers of the tracking and how they ultimately used the information.
This reminds me that customer engagement and tracking of customer behavior constantly walks the fine line between helpful and intrusive. Privacy has become a huge concern in today’s society, especially online, and needs to be taken seriously and with great care. The entire backbone of customer engagement and customer interaction is Permission. Seth Godin has written an entire book called Permission Marketing and it still holds true today. Without permission, any kind of customer engagement becomes scary and intrusive.
Let’s all learn a lesson from the story, even if the allegations turn out to be false, to always remember to gain permission to gather data, utilize information, or engage in any kind of intimate relationship with any customer.
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SPURspectives is the blog of Spur Communications, a nationally-recognized, Kansas City-based Interactive Marketing Agency that is leading the industry in customer engagement through individualized, 1:1 multi-channel marketing communications.
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Good Point. Each of my client web sites state exactly what the collected data will and will not be used for. I hope that is a common practice.
Now, the question is, who really reads the T/C pages of a site?
Maybe the issue becomes an Opt-In strategy rather than an Opt-out. With the Opt-In concept, we could market to the customers about the benefits of data collection and how it would make their lives easier.