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In one of our recent blogs, we talked about the benefits of personalization. While personalization can be a powerful way to increase engagement, it’s important to understand the fine line between creating a unique customized experience and invading consumers’ privacy. In our increasingly digitized world, many people (though perhaps not Millennials) are apprehensive about giving out data and are highly sensitive about keeping personal information protected. While this can be a greater issue for financial and medical institutions who are dealing with highly sensitive personal data, it can also be relevant to retailers and other seemingly innocuous businesses that people engage with day to day.

Getting a Little Too Personal

Target decided to tap into the highly lucrative market of soon-to-be parents and developed an algorithm that analyzed customers’ purchases to determine if and when they were expecting a baby. Based on this data, the company began sending coupons in the mail to expectant mothers for baby-related items to try and gain their business in the crucial pre-baby period.

Much to Target’s surprise, this effort had an unexpectedly negative effect — some consumers received the baby-oriented communications before they had told any family members about their pregnancy. In one case, a 16-year-old’s father irately complained to Target before finding out that his teenage daughter was, in fact, pregnant. Target quickly learned that they needed to change their strategy: “If we send someone a catalog and say, ‘Congratulations on your first child!’ and they’ve never told us they’re pregnant, that’s going to make some people uncomfortable,” said Andrew Pole, a statistician for Target. “Then we started mixing in all these ads for things we knew pregnant women would never buy, so the baby ads looked random. We’d put an ad for a lawn mower next to diapers. We’d put a coupon for wine glasses next to infant clothes. That way, it looked like all the products were chosen by chance. And we found out that as long as a pregnant woman thinks she hasn’t been spied on, she’ll use the coupons. She just assumes that everyone else on her block got the same mailer for diapers and cribs. As long as we don’t spook her, it works.”

The takeaway? It is a privilege to receive customer information. People put inherent trust in a company when they choose to supply personal details about themselves, and they expect that it will be used in a respectful way that will enhance their experience with that brand. Personalization can be fun and beneficial for all involved, but it’s important for marketers to take a step back, put themselves in the customer’s shoes and imagine how communications will be received — will this be fun and intriguing, or does it feel like it crosses a line into becoming too personal? If the latter, it’s probably better to rethink your strategy and make sure it’s hitting the right note.