Adtracking is bad for you – if you tell people you are doing it
Adtracking is a way of finding out who has been looking at your advert. Before the internet it involved asking people if they remembered an advert or product. These days through the use of digital technology it can involve seeing who has actually visited a web site and what they did there.
The most obvious way of doing this is to send out a load of emails with a link to the web site. The technology then allows you to see which of those email addresses resulted in a click to the web site.
This information can be used to give you really informative comparative counts (advert A got 5% click throughs, advert B got 14%). That of course is a perfectly legitimate approach.
But it can also be used to capture the individual email addresses that have resulted in a click through. In a further sophistication you can then target those addresses in relation to what each person bought.
Again, most of us have done this for years with simple databases. You record who bought what on a database, and send them adverts appropriate to that purchase. Simple, obvious, direct marketing.
From the earliest days of direct mail, lists were made available of people who had bought x so that you could sell them y. And way back in those dark distant days we all learned that you get a much higher response rate if you just write a regular letter to the person, rather than beginning, “I see that you recently bought a subscription to Pumpkin Monthly and wondered if you would like also to subscribe to Apple Eaters News.” If you own both publications you might just get away with it, but otherwise, avoid it like the plague.
The fact is people in all walks of life don’t like the notion that you know their secrets – even if their secrets are nothing to be ashamed of.
So it is not surprising that in a Gallup Poll 67% of adults in the USA said they did not believe advertisers should be allowed to match ads to their specific interests based on websites they have visited.
61% actually said that these methods are not justified even if they help keep the internet free, due to the invasion of privacy.
This figure should not be confused with another one that is sometimes quoted – that 47% of respondents said that having advertisers they choose track their reading and buying on line was ok.
The key point here is “choose”. If you have a hobby or interest, and you buy a lot from an organisation that you really trust, then you might well allow this, so they can point out to you particular products that might be of interest.
For example, I buy a lot of audio books for listening to in the car. 99.999% of all new audio book releases are of no interest to me, but having someone track what I buy, and then tip me off that there is a new Le Carre audio book out, or a new edition of Bleak Expectations available from the BBC, is great. It saves me hours of searching. But that is my choice, no one else’s.
In short, on line tracking is not illegal, so everyone can do it, but what you absolutely must not do is let the customer or potential customer know you are doing it.
And yet I regularly get emails that begin, “I see that you have been on our web site today…”
Believe me that is an absolute killer. Almost anything that suggests to a reader that you are tracking their private lives on the internet will destroy a sale.
Of course you can do it the Amazon way, with their amusing, “People who bought x also bought y”, first because when it gets it wrong it is hilarious (“We’ve noticed that people who bought ‘The quantum mechanics of retrograde asteroids: a review” also bought “Thomas the Tank Engine’s Christmas Treat”) and second because it is that supplier writing to you about something you know he/she/it knows.
Amazon knows it has sold me a book on retrograde planets, so no confidence is broken. Of course they know – they posted it to me and banked my money. What I don’t want to think about is the fact that they or anyone else knows about my browsing or my private life.
You might track, and you might use the information. But for goodness sake – never tell your audience that you are doing it.
If you would like to know more about tracking, and how Hamilton House can do it, and how we can construct follow up emails that don’t alarm and put off your readers, please do give us a call on 01536 399 000, or email Tony@hamilton-house.com
This article originally appeared on the Direct Mail Secrets news group. You can subscribe to DMS by emailing direct-mail-secrets-subscribe@yahoogroups.com and then clicking on the reply to confirm.
