{"id":513146,"date":"2010-04-02T17:36:41","date_gmt":"2010-04-02T21:36:41","guid":{"rendered":"tag:contentnext.com,2010-04-04:article\/419-some-rules-for-location-based-marketing-why-geofencing-goes-too-far"},"modified":"2010-04-02T17:36:41","modified_gmt":"2010-04-02T21:36:41","slug":"some-privacy-ground-rules-for-location-based-marketing-why-geofencing-goes-too-far","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/513146","title":{"rendered":"Some Privacy Ground Rules For Location-Based Marketing: Why ‘Geofencing’ Goes Too Far"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Matt
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Matt Silk is the SVP of Waterfall Mobile, a San Francisco-based digital-messaging company.<\/em><\/p>\n

Location-based services are getting an enormous amount of attention lately, with the launch of Google\u2019s Near Me Now for mobile and other high-profile announcements. As a mobile executive, I am thrilled that this idea \u2013 once literally the stuff of science fiction \u2013 is finally coming together. But as a mobile consumer, I have the same concern as everyone else: privacy. I want to know that any messaging I receive is opt-in only; that I will only be contacted when and how I want to be; and that whatever communications come my way will be 100% spam free. <\/p>\n

One of the not new areas of mobile marketing is \u201cgeofencing,” or the idea of tracking people on a mobile subscriber list based on proximity to a particular retail store, and then sending out tailored messaging alerts. It sounds great in theory, but I just can\u2019t get behind it. Geofencing involves knowing the location of individual customers at all times so you can \u201cping\u201d them anytime they are physically near individual stores.  <\/p>\n

Constantly tracking and watching where consumers are would involve checking location every few minutes. That could get ridiculously expensive (carrier lookups for messaging, draining your battery for smartphones, etc.) and feels a little too big brother for me. It\u2019s like an electronic dog collar that buzzes every time I hit the fence. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Not to mention the fact that, if you are looking to hit someone with a message every time that person gets within a certain distance of your store, then you need to be constantly ready to provide engaging content. National retail chains are already buried trying to track all of the different channels where their customers are with the social-media explosion. Are they really ready to sign up for this task? I don\u2019t think they have the staff or budget to deliver on the hype that is being marketed.<\/p>\n

Here is a great and simple use case for location that makes sense to me. Let\u2019s say your mobile list has 20,000 people on it and you want to send a marketing message on Wednesday at 3 p.m. Eastern Time.  At the appointed time, do one check on location, and then ping everyone within a set distance of those stores \u2013 with a highly relevant message. Everyone else on the subscriber list will get a different message, with a generic, non-location-based coupon offer. You could have 50 different messages each targeting specific locations.<\/p>\n

Real-time location data is inherently, and extremely, personal. Brands should respect this access and never abuse it \u2013 lest it be taken away, either by the user or by wireless carriers. A rule of thumb that applies to all digital messaging, and particularly applies here, is this: if you don\u2019t have something compelling to say, don\u2019t text your customers. If they get annoyed and reply “STOP” to a text, then that customer is gone forever.  <\/p>\n

Let users have the option to choose when and where you can contact them and to divulge as much or as little information as they want. This ensures your contact is relevant and desired. Give them clear options to select from when they are setting up their profiles. If people want to input their sex, age, gender, marital status, time of day to contact, number of messages, give them that option.<\/p>\n

Any brand manager pondering an LBS program should walk through the opt-in and -out protocol personally. If the rules aren\u2019t extremely clear, consider a redesign. Whatever that costs, it\u2019s better than the potential blowback of a mobile campaign gone awry. A process should also be in place to allow for users to report abuse of their information and a way to have reports handled in a timely matter.  <\/p>\n

In many ways, this is the same set of rules that marketers should be following on the web—but not all of them do. Consumers, rather than making brands pay for that privacy breach, are more apt to just delete the email and move on. Mobile phones are different. They are more sacred and personal to their owners, and if marketers cross the privacy lines with mobile marketing, consumers won\u2019t let them off the hook so easily.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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Matt Silk is the SVP of Waterfall Mobile, a San Francisco-based digital-messaging company. Location-based services are getting an enormous amount of attention lately, with the launch of Google\u2019s Near Me Now for mobile and other high-profile announcements. As a mobile executive, I am thrilled that this idea \u2013 once literally the stuff of science fiction […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6626,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-513146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mobile","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6626"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=513146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513146\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=513146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=513146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=513146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}