Trish Dominy says it can take years to build up a good relationship with consumers, but just moments to destroy it – so nurture their confidence carefully.

As a list supplier, I increasingly see the need that mailers have for greater selectability on data. 

Buying preferences, date of birth, family composition and household income are a few of the myriad selections requested regularly. Targeting specific segments of data is undoubtedly essential for mailers; it enables them to mirror the profiles of their best customers, test new segments of data and     measure the responsiveness of each selection.  

All of this provides valuable information for their future marketing strategies. Highly targeted mailings also avoid excessive costs and wastage.

The problem many list owners face is it’s often difficult to obtain this information from their valuable, loyal, paying customers who have become more and more aware of the vulnerability of their data.  

Many lifestyle sources of data are able to provide extensive selection criteria, but there is a big difference between these sources and the selection criteria available on customer files, where a consumer may be buying a product/service, attending an event, or subscribing to a magazine.

Data study

In June, the UK DMA published a FAST.Map data tracking study providing useful and valuable insight into how consumers behave with their data and questioning specifically what makes consumers more likely to share information.  

The study found that, overall, people are more likely to share their personal information when buying online than anywhere else, and 54 per cent are far more likely to provide information when they trust the brand concerned. Also rating highly in the propensity to provide information is convenience, with 42 per cent of people more likely to share information with a company providing a service that is essential to them. Data privacy also scored high; 34 per cent of responders were also more likely to provide information if the company had a clear privacy policy. Interestingly, discounts and money-off vouchers scored much lower at 28 per cent, proving that consumers aren’t so easily swayed by incentives.

The type of information shared does depend on the circumstances: many consumers were happy to provide email addresses in the course of a transaction, however most were reluctant to provide date of birth information – in many cases they were less likely to provide their date of birth than they were their telephone number.  

Bad experience

Overall, consumers put their greatest trust in brands they know, recognise, have transacted with before and are confident that they will keep their data safe. Get the brand and message right, then, when the data has been collected, prove that they were right to trust you.

Eighty-four per cent of consumers were confident the brands they trusted would keep their personal details responsibly yet, astonishingly after a relationship had been built, 49 per cent of respondents then subsequently had a bad experience with a company which caused them to question whether a company could handle their data correctly.  

Be warned, trust can take years to build and be lost in an instant. Once gone it can be very difficult to claw back. 

Trish Dominy is list manager at RSA Direct – the UK partner within the Lists4Europe network. Email: trish.dominy@rsadirect.com