Google's new privacy policy

Thursday, February 02, 2012

There's been discontented rumblings about Google's privacy policy for ages, so it's good to see a new, simpler, more straightforward policy released last week. 

What's been the problem? It's all about targeting. Imagine how big the internet it. It's vast. Absolutely huge. Search engines need to figure out which sites come top on the first page of the search results, and which belong lower down in the results pages. As t'internet grows, it becomes more difficult to 'decide' because the market is so crowded. So they've been bringing targeting into play, tailoring the search results to your 'behaviour'. 

Which sounds OK... or does it? When you think about it, maybe not. Targeting involves working out what you like and giving you more of it. Which is fine except you end up only seeing the stuff you like, a sort of abbreviated internet based on your preferences and search behaviour. At the end of the day it means you never see stuff you might dislike... but which could be fascinating. 

Targeting in this way restricts what you see when you search. And the more rebellious amongst us don't want to be cosseted in this way. We want to see the internet in all its horrid glory, not an edited version decided upon by Google.  

Google might be amazingly good at targeting content to your habits and preferences, likes and dislikes. But bear in mind that it's only as good as its algorithms, and algorithms are nowhere near clever enough to suss out the complexities, vagaries, eccentricities and subtleties of human behaviour. So its good to know that their new privacy rules make it much easier to switch off the targeting side of things. 

You can turn off personalised search in a few clicks, opening up your search experience again so you see more of the real world, without interference. If you have a Google account, you can reject personalised search via the Dashboard. 

Google also uses cookies to figure out your preferences, present 'relevant' adverts and track user trends. Luckily you can re-set your browser to refuse cookies or let you know when one's been sent. You can also view and manage your advert preferences via their Ads Preferences Manager and opt out of their Doubleclick advertising cookie. 

Last but not least, when you stay signed out of your Google account instead of remaining signed in all day, your searches aren't as heavily personalised.  

Although it's new and shiny, Google's updated privacy policy is still a bit of a work up and there's a lot of information to trawl through. Thankfully it's in reasonably plain English, which helps. But it'd be better still if Google simply added a 'yes' or 'no' button to their home page, so we could opt out of all personalisation with one click. Maybe one day!   

Email marketing - The wonder of targeting

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Email marketing is a massive success story. The online face of direct mail, it pulls in big money for ecommerce businesses who get it right. And part of getting it right involves intelligent targeting.

If you wouldn't recognise targeting if it bit you, here's some useful hints and tips to help you understand what it's all about. 

At a basic level, targeting means only sending an offer to people you know have a good chance of being interested in it. Approaching people who you know should respond positively means you'll enjoy a better initial response rate and convert more enquiries to sales. On the other hand, contact everyone on the planet - and his dog - and your % chances of converting are much lower.   
 
You can email your customer base and your database of opted-in prospects. And you can buy mailing lists of email addresses and carry out cold mailings. Either way, targeting is vital for success.

Emailing your customers: Buying from you means your customers have expressed an explicit interest in your products or services and are more likely than average to buy again. You can market to B2B customers with no opt in but you need their agreement if you're making offers to consumers.   
 
Emailing your prospects: Prospects are people who have shown an interest in your products or services but haven't bought from you yet. If your company works on a B2B basis, you're allowed to email your prospect database without an opt in. But if they're consumers you must get their agreement - their opt in - before you're legally allowed to market to them. 

Emailing a cold list: These people won't have heard of you so they're pretty cold in comparison to your customers and prospects. Check your bought-in mailing list is 100% opted in, otherwise you could run into legal difficulties. You can buy a list of millions and millions of un-targeted email addresses. But targeted lists always perform bettert. 

Testing goes hand in hand with targeting. You could carry out a mass email campaign to a segment of 1000 customers, another segment of 5000 prospects and a cold emailing to 100,000 targeted strangers. Testing them against each other head to head will give you all sorts of invaluable knowledge about - and insight into - the way your lists perform and how you might improve your email marketing results in the future.   

Why settle for less than all-singing, all-dancing B2B website?

Thursday, December 16, 2010

There's websites and websites. Yes, you could settle for a simple brochure site. But to be frank, they're well past their sell-by date. Once upon a time successful online businesses were built by replicating the company brochure and not a lot more. Today your online presence needs to work much harder to beat the competition.

From a customer perspective it needs to be active, interactive, informative and attractive. It should engage, inspire, excite and reassure. It should be simple to use and should load super-fast. Your payment gateway and sales process should be seamless. It should let you deal with complaints and issues smoothly and effectively. And it should include a space where people can contribute their opinions, say a blog or forum.    

From your perspective it should be easy to manage, control, expand and change. It should make customer aquisition and retention easy for you. It should facilitate direct marketing by collecting data to help you build targeted customer databases and carry out targeted campaigns. It should manage your customer contact stategy for you with autoresponder messages and timed email reminders, special offers and newsletters. And it should let you connect with social media easily. In short it should be a business-in-a-box that doesn't cause you any hassle. Something that works with you rather than making business even more of a challenge. 

Does a brochure site do any of that? Nope. It just sits there looking pretty. Nice... but dim. So don't settle for less than an all-singing, all-dancing intelligent online business solution. That's the bunny.