From a marketing point of view, perception is all and so understanding, managing and responding to customers perceptions will improve customer relations. In many ways our first role as marketers is education.

Juliet

In your article you mentioned how some people suggested that email tracking is one step away from phone hacking. I disagree with this. Having your phone hacked is someone listening to every single phone call you make. Having your email tracked only tracks the one email that the company sent you and only that company, that sent you the email, is able to see the tracking. I believe the difference is scope, a company tracking how you read their newsletter, or visit their website, is different from one organization tracking everything you do.

To me it’s kind of like a brick and mortar store that has closed circuit video in their store. They may only use the video as security but a smart store would also use it to watch their customers, how do they move around the store, what grabs their attention, how can we make their experience better? How can we bring attention to other areas of the store conducive to the customers visit?

Have you ever heard that a little bit of science takes you away from God, and a lot of science brings you closer to God? How about applying that same theory to technology? A little understanding of technology makes you paranoid, a better understanding of technology and you can understand that it does help business (In the right hands).

And I think that is the key, if you read most privacy policies they will often talk about the fact that even visiting a website you will be tracked. What pages you visit, how you navigate the site, etc. You are always being tracked, because businesses need that information to make things better. But what will that business do with that information? Is it information that they collect for only themselves and only to use to make their own business better? Or is it something that they share, or even worse sell out to the rest of the world?

Tell the same people that didn’t know that email could be tracked and got excited, that they are also tracked on your website, what happens? They probably get even more paranoid. What needs to be focused on in my opinion is that a visitors personal information is available to us because you are on our website, because you are subscribed to our newsletter, but we will never share that information with anyone. We use that personal information to improve our systems nothing else, we use that information to help us SERVE you, our visitors better, nothing else, and that’s our promise.

It definitely helps when businesses are transparent, but in doing so I think the why and how’s need to have focus. If you put too much focus on the fact that “we’re watching you” then people will get even more paranoid. Providing the information to why and how we use the information is important for understanding.

The fact that the visitors have a computer and are on your website, newsletter and more means that all their information is passed along no matter what, the only difference is businesses are becoming more aware that they can collect that data and use it for improvement.

A business that says that information isn’t available to them, just means they aren’t very bright and don’t know how to collect it, or don’t even know what information is there. That doesn’t give me much confidence. Or even worse they are just playing dumb and using my information in ways I wouldn’t appreciate.

A business that just tells me, of course that information is available to us. And here’s how we use it, either A) Not at all, or B) to improve our ability to serve our customers. Well at least I have a little more confidence and trust in that company and until I find that they break that trust by selling the information or something. I can at least proceed cautiously.