Viewing consumer privacy with the lens of a loyalty marketer
Consumer privacy is something we as loyalty marketers take very seriously. With the current and upcoming regulations, we’re continuously monitoring and enhancing our technology and services to ensure our solutions meet compliancy requirements.
Loyalty programs are permission based marketing. Your customers opt in to your program to participate and agree to share their personal data in exchange for value in the program.
By acknowledging the terms and conditions of the program upon registration, customers are made aware of the ways in which brands will use their information, providing transparency and confidence for the customer and creating an opportunity for brands.
Consider viewing consumer privacy with the lens of a loyalty marketer, and you’ll begin to understand the benefits it brings to your loyalty program:
Customers (members) have full transparency and control of their data
The privacy obligation provides loyalty members a good mechanism for moving beyond the basics. Under the new rules, marketers have to give consumers the ability to see what data you have, correct it, opt out of communications, along with the opportunity to be forgotten.
As loyalty marketers, we’ve been working to put mechanisms in place to support the requirements enabling full transparency to member’s data and beyond.
Puts customers at the center of all marketing activities
As a loyalty program member, information is solicited and the consumer can decide the types of offers they’re interested in, their preference in terms of how they’d like to be communicated to (and how often), the partners they might be interested in and so much more. These interactions extend beyond the minimum requirements of the privacy laws and go a step further to ask members about their preferences included in their profile (putting the control in consumers’ hands) allowing marketers to drive better personalization.
Enhances engagement, essentially leading to 1:You
The culmination of the data learned from the privacy regulations and the insights stored in member data enables marketers to get to know their customers and communicate to them on a 1:You level. As we’ve mentioned previously, we help brands shift their communications from 1:1 (a messaging strategy that’s ‘generically personalized’ with promotional offers) to 1:You (a holistic customer experience strategy that’s personalized with the best choice for individuals across all points on interactions). And these data inputs are a key driver in achieving 1:You.
As you continue to evaluate your loyalty program to ensure it’s compliant, make sure your technology platform and services are set-up for managing the rights of individuals, including the:
- Right of Access
- Right of Rectification
- Right to Restrict
- Right to Object
- Right to be Forgotten
- Right to Data Portability
Loyalty marketers should consider complying with privacy regulation as an opportunity, not a barrier. Remember, the regulations of GDPR and CCPA are introducing additional complexities for brands, but if viewing these as an opportunity to reach out to customers to proactively ask them how they’d like to engage with the brand is important.
Customers value their privacy, and brands can increase customer loyalty if they demonstrate they are good stewards of customer identity.
At Epsilon, our loyalty solution, Agility Loyalty, has been adopted to ensure compliance with all regulations. To learn more about how Agility Loyalty manages these rights of individuals, please feel free to contact us.
Forrester Research’s evaluation included a review of the 14 most significant loyalty service providers across 22-criterion. Epsilon received the highest scores possible in 13 criteria, including the loyalty strategy services, loyalty program management services, data management services and privacy and security criteria within the current offering category. For the full report “The Forrester Wave™: Loyalty Service Providers, Q3 2019” click here.
**This post first appeared on L360.
