When done ethically, marketing uses customer data to create trust-building experiences that foster customer loyalty, and that are indeed accurate, without discrimination against groups or individuals.

But a foundational value of ethical data-driven marketing must be consent – good data ethics include being clear about how data will be used, putting the consumer in control, and avoiding over-personalisation that might lead people to feel uncomfortable or distrustful.

Transparency

Sequential, data-driven marketing, with its aim for openness, makes it possible for the marketer to craft more effective campaign content, spend more wisely, extend the relationship, and ultimately deliver a more optimal, and deeply valued, experience for today’s intelligent customer.

Mar-tech and ad-tech have also helped marketers to collect first-party, user-level marketing data that allows for the development of targeted media buying and creative messaging strategies – with a lot of obstacles along the way.

Multiple data feeds need to be tracked to performance metrics, and then reconciled to brand objectives and KPIs (or key performance indicators). These complex demands can easily snow the marketer, who might end up making poorer decisions if kept in the dark; or worse, be led down creative garden paths that end up running off the road completely. So we need to figure out what minimum amount of information is needed – and where the procedural protections need to go. After all, if law enforcement or national security investigators share too much information, they can compromise their investigations or risk losing lives if the information leaks out prematurely.

Privacy

More and more consumers care about data privacy; 7 in 10 consumers would stop doing business with a firm if they knew it had used their data without their permission.

Many countries and US states require businesses to comply with data-privacy laws; this often means getting individuals’ approval before collecting and sharing their data.

Likewise, companies should ensure that marketers are collecting and storing only as much data as necessary. And marketers must be transparent with customers about how data will be used, and allow consumers to access and alter their own records as they wish. In addition, marketers must test data-driven algorithms on a regular basis to be certain they aren’t reinforcing bias or discrimination – thereby keeping businesses in compliance with data-protection rules, and helping them to forge deeper relationships based on reciprocal trust with their customers.

Consent

Striking the right balance between personalisation and privacy can be tricky. Better outcomes are achieved when brands meet customers halfway, by respecting privacy expectations, offering intelligent, customised messaging and services, protecting against hacks, and being transparent about data use while offering customers options. In the longer run, such efforts cultivate the types of relationships that engender customer loyalty and brand value.

The basic requirement to achieve that goal is staff training in data ethics. As a part of their effort to develop corporate culture with values such as ethics, companies should continuously hold training sessions on data ethics, develop customer data use guidelines, and encourage the mutual supervision of their staff.

This article explores approaches and methods for collecting ethical data, gaining consent, ethics and customer targeting responsibly and the ethical limits of personalisation. Find out more about building a culture of care by downloading the WFA Data Ethics Playbook – content that only WFA members have access to: Go now and be part of a community of marketers around the world committed to building a fair, safe and responsible digital marketing environment!

Accountability

Hence, marketers will have to earn trust and credibility with customers as they collect, analyse and use data. To do so, they should do so in transparent, private, fair and socially responsible ways. Developing such an environment requires leadership commitment but also involves regular audit practices.

Transparent and trustworthy data practices were good for business as well as consumers: they engendered trust between stakeholders that led to customer loyalty and the business itself, while reducing regulatory scrutiny or consumer backlash.

The Cambridge Analytica and Facebook data-sharing scandals demonstrate the risks involved in unethical data practices; and we similarly saw that consensual data capture and data ethics were both central concerns in recent events at the smart city Internet of Things project at Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs (formerly known as Google Sidewalk Labs) in Toronto. Given all these developments, marketers must ensure that they’re as open and transparent as possible when it comes to explaining to their customers how they are processing their data (including methods of capturing it, how it’s used, and how it’s protected and stored), crafting clearly understandable terms and privacy policies, offering appropriate and informed ways of opting in or out of various kinds of data capture, and being responsive to enquiries and complaints that come their way.