Dear Marketers, Stop Using Covertly Acquired Third-Party Data

A multi-billion dollar industry, data brokering is the buying and selling of consumer data — a poor practice that has gone decades without regulation. As this consumer information is seemingly invaluable to marketing efforts, marketers have heavily relied on it to carry out their email campaigns. Unfortunately, this data is often outdated, inaccurate and obtained using questionable practices.

As a result, the recipient of an email created using third-party data almost always ends up with an irrelevant message — and certainly more annoyed than delighted at having received it. According to a recent survey, 30 percent of U.S. consumers receive between one and three irrelevant messages per day, and 17 percent of U.S. consumers receive more than 10 per day. These messages likely end up deleted or flagged as spam, translating to billions of wasted marketing dollars every year.

Annoyance with these emails is one thing, but when marketing tactics don’t abide by basic privacy rights, it’s an entirely different problem. Data brokers capture billions of individual data points about consumers — without clear permission. Nearly every consumer-facing business is guilty of buying data from third-party sources. Unfortunately, the average consumer has no idea that his or her personal details are up for sale. Prompted by consumer outrage over blatant privacy violations, the government has now set the FTC loose to investigate the buying and selling of personal information.

So, with the business and potential legal perils of surreptitious data-capture methods exposed, we truly could be nearing the end of the line of brands’ reliance on third-party consumer data. How, then, will marketers be able to reach their intended targets and, ideally, personalize their communications with their customers? Is there a way to capture accurate personal information while still complying with privacy rights and standards?

Many brands are already finding the answer to these questions by using first-party data as the foundation of their marketing efforts. What does that mean? First-party data includes everything consumers choose to reveal about themselves, from basic details like their names, email addresses and zip codes to deeper profile data, such as interests, occupation and relationship statuses from their social network accounts. Altogether, this information comprises a consumers’ digital identities. People use their identities online every day: Every time consumers fill out registration forms or authenticate using existing social profiles, they’re using these digital identities and freely offering information about themselves.

With customers’ identities verified through the responsible collection of first-party data taken directly from the source — whether that’s through social login or customized, progressive registration flows — brands can personalize communications with each consumer at every touch point. For example, if consumers register with a brand using their identities from Facebook, the business can tailor email offers according to the pages the consumers “like” on the social network. Or, the identity data can be used to customize consumers’ entire website experiences with product or content recommendations that appeal to their preferences.

With first-party, permission-based identity data at the center of brands’ marketing strategies, marketers will finally have the intelligence they need to produce hyper-relevant communications, achieve higher conversion rates and ensure they aren’t violating their customers’ basic privacy rights. In addition, consumers can finally have some peace of mind about their data privacy as dependence on the buying and selling of third-party data dwindles.