As we enter 2023, it's clear that how we understand privacy has undergone a seismic shift—not just for companies like Uberflip, but for individuals as well. 

Once upon a time, privacy meant slapping a cookie consent form on a website and linking it to a legal boilerplate privacy policy that nobody in their right mind would ever read. 

Today, though, privacy is top of mind for your visitors, buyers, and customers. The rapid pace at which technology has become potentially more intrusive needs to be taken seriously. Today’s buyers care more than ever before about how organizations use their data, the safeguards used to protect that data, and their ability to control it at any given moment. 

On the flip side, however, people also still crave convenience, personalized experiences, and maximum value when making buying decisions. They’re just less willing to sacrifice their privacy for it.

It’s clear that two trends dominate the privacy lens for buyers: the need for trust and the desire for personalization. We’ll dig deeper into these trends in a moment, but before that a bit of background on privacy.

How Privacy Has Changed Since GDPR

Let’s take a small step back and understand what’s happened to privacy over the last few years.

We live in a new era where advances in technology allow organizations to collect and use data to create powerful new products and services—think of tech leaders like Amazon, Google, Spotify, and even TikTok. 

Like Spider-Man, we’re quickly learning that “with great power comes great responsibility.”

The world took notice of how some large firms refused accountability, resulting in the misuse of data and a violation of your trust. Before the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), we had scandals like Cambridge Analytica, which only awakened the era of privacy enforcement amongst regulators. Today, we’re witnessing Amazon face the largest GDPR violation to date ($877M) due to data-hungry and privacy-intrusive practices.

Starting in 2018 with the enactment of the GDPR, governments started to build stricter privacy regulations. Even countries with existing privacy laws, like Canada and the United States, have since updated legislation to match or even exceed GDPR. 

A study by Gartner in 2021 predicted that by the end of 2023, modern privacy laws will cover approximately 75% of the world’s population. But actually, we may exceed that estimate by year’s end. At the time of publishing this post, tracking done by the UN shows that 71% of all recognized countries in the world have some form of active privacy legislation, and 9% of countries have a draft form of legislation. 

What we now know is that privacy is a topic worth the attention of organizations. In many cases, it should be a cornerstone of how they evaluate business opportunities and leverage technology and data to cater to the needs of customers.

Why You Can’t Have Privacy without Trust

Some might think “trust” and “privacy” are very different things.

At Uberflip, we believe that trust is an important component of privacy. 

Is there any clearer example of the fact that trust is a prerequisite of real privacy than when we share secrets with people closest to us? (You probably tell your spouse things you wouldn’t tell your letter carrier). When we disclose any personal information to anyone, we automatically assume a sense of trust. When that trust is violated, so is our willingness to trust that person again.

That same principle applies to your customers.

Being able to trust you is vital to them. One of the best ways to earn that trust is by adopting and implementing privacy principles when engaging with them. 

A recent study by McKinsey shows that 2 out of 3 Americans believe that organizations do not use personal information responsibly. There’s no better direct evidence of this than the fact that, as of April 2022, only 25% of iOS users opted to allow organizations to collect tracking data of them. 

Digital marketers clearly have an uphill battle to build a trust-based relationship with customers to sustain and effectively drive business growth.

At Uberflip, we know that trust is central to the success of our business. Creating tailored content experiences is how we’ve demonstrated the importance trust has on your bottom line. Our philosophy is that every piece of content encourages your customers to trust you. And as that level of trust increases, so does our ability to serve more relevant content, while respecting your customers' privacy.

Here are some ways you may have noticed how trust is core to Uberflip:

• L.U.V. - One of our core values is L.U.V., which stands for Listen, Understand and Value everyone. Whether we work with our customers or our employees, we live by this value of listening to the needs of our audience, ensuring we understand the core problem, and building solutions to those problems that give back value. 
  
  
• Control and data minimization - As an Uberflip customer, you’re in control of the data you collect from visitors. The Uberflip platform ensures that you always know what data you're collecting and have control over how much or how little data you collect through integrations with Marketing Automation Platforms (MAP) or other enrichment sources. 
• Security and transparency - Uberflip is a SOC2 Type II compliant organization. That sounds technical, but what it really means is that we continually update and optimize security safeguards to keep up with data protection standards—maintaining confidentiality, integrity, and availability. 
  
  We’re doubling down our efforts to be even more transparent about our data handling practices. We’re not only updating our Privacy Policy to be more transparent about what we do with your data, but soon we’ll launch a Trust Center to share how we take trust and privacy seriously. 

Balancing Privacy and Personalization

We started off by sharing how buyers still expect a personalized experience that gives them value. In both the B2B and B2C space, they still want tailored, highly relevant experiences, but they also have strong expectations when it comes to maintaining their privacy. 

Today, personalized experiences help set a business apart from its competition. Many consider personalization to be something consumers take for granted when making buying decisions.

Another study by McKinsey, for example, showed that organizations that are unable to deliver personalized experiences may have to spend 10 to 20% more on marketing and sales to generate the same returns. 

That said, personalization can be a slippery slope leading to data abuse.

Time and time again, we’ve seen organizations take personalization to an extreme that ultimately violates an individual’s privacy. This can and does lead to irreparable damage to an organization’s brand equity. Almost two-thirds of consumers from a 2018 study reported a brand experience as too personal or invasive because the brand had information that they didn’t share knowingly or directly. 

There is a light at the end of this tunnel. When organizations take responsibility for using data appropriately and creating personalized experiences that give consumers value, 83% of consumers are willing to share their data to receive a better experience. 

As leaders in creating personalized content experiences, we've learned firsthand about the importance of protecting privacy while aiming for relevance.

1. Collecting Enough Data for Relevance

Relevance and personalization begin by managing data and knowing how much to collect. In order to succeed in a privacy-first world, organizations need to be conscious of what data is needed to tailor consumer experiences.

At Uberflip, we use our Content Experience Framework to help us understand, tag, and categorize content to create unique content experiences. By doing so, we focus on only collecting information that would help us automate what content to deliver such as general industry information, topics of interest, and content mediums you enjoy. All this data is collected anonymously and only ever tied back to an individual when they are ready to share their personal information.

2. Understanding Your Audience’s Needs

The second step to balancing personalization and privacy is actually understanding your audience. Knowing what content Sally enjoys on your website or where Sally went on your site, only gives you insights into Sally. But you want more people like Sally coming to you, right? 

Using data in aggregated forms and understanding content performance will provide you the insights you need to not only get Sally to buy, but also get her friends interested in what you have to offer. The Uberflip platform gives you the ability to create target audiences so you can store what you know customers like Sally enjoy most, without using Sally’s personal information.

The art of balancing personalization and privacy is a difficult one for digital marketers. However, knowing what data you collect about your customers, creating buyer personas instead of using personal information, and building content experiences that are relevant and meaningful all help reinforce your customers’ sense of trust. 

3. Communicating Your Responsible Data Practices

The last step to making personalization and privacy work is to communicate and be transparent with your customers on how you use their data and how customers can control the data they share with you.

This is where the way you inform customers why you need their consent, how you handle their data, and how they can exercise control of their data through consent forms and privacy policies come into play. Make it clear to your customers the value they receive when exchanging their data with you by making legal language easy to understand and meaningful.

Privacy Should be a Priority in 2023 

Privacy is a top priority for Uberflip. We believe it should be for all organizations in 2023.

Developing trust-based relationships with your customers and balancing personalization techniques with privacy in mind are both key to helping you create value for customers, scale, and drive growth.

Uberflip was built on the promise of building trust and creating personalized experiences that provide value. In doing so, we believe that privacy is an engrained principle of our organization and we take pride in continuing to evolve and demonstrate our commitment to privacy by leveraging technological innovation and legislative reform to help build a better world. 

To learn more about how we ensure Privacy at Uberflip, reach out to us. We’d be happy to direct you to more information about our data handling and privacy practices.