The Holy Grail of marketing would be to know exactly the right moment to activate your campaigns; that they have the perfect message and that it makes the target audience have no choice but to convert.
However, there are so many variables that determine the success or failure of a campaign that it would be almost impossible to design and execute the perfect campaign. To begin with, it would take a brutal amount of information, information that should come from your potential customers, the product to be offered, the social, temporal and economic context, and even assuming the possession of all that information, it would be very difficult to find the perfect activation rules to maximize the result of our campaign to near-perfect levels.
Smartphones, inexhaustible sources of information.
One of the sources of information that provides more data about the potential customer is the smartphone. If we think about it, today the smartphone has become an extension of our own body; we wake up with it and thanks to it and its multiple alarm settings that rumble in our ears every morning. Of course we go to bed with it, checking our mail client's inbox, hoping not to have any kind of warning that will cause us some kind of insomnia, and in between, there are few moments of the day when this technological gadget is not with us.
The activity we generate with the smartphone is really important, and nowadays the main function for which it was designed often takes a back seat. The smartphone has become a window to the world, thanks to social networks and access to instant information, and it has also become a way to interact with it, with its photos, videos and other applications.
We no longer need a secretary, a personal trainer, a financial adviser, a doctor, a dietician or a photographer... All these examples only highlight the large amount of information that is generated, transmitted and manipulated by a smartphone. And as you might expect, marketing departments, agencies and advertisers try to use all this information in order to know the smartphone user better than oneself. The big questions that these groups want to answer, about their customers and their mobile activity, are based on three concepts: what you do, when you do it and where you do it. And perhaps this is why they invented, in part, mobile applications.
This eagerness to access information has even generated bad practices that have brought to light cases as absurd as the one in which a Flashlight application wanted to access the phone's contacts, manage your connections, access the camera or read your SMS, obviously a nonsense whose main objective was not to enlighten the user. Other cases that were mentioned, for example, were applications that automatically sent SMS with personal information without informing the consumer.
According to a 2016 Google Play report, more than a third of the applications accessible in the market request more permissions than necessary to solve their primary objective. But to what extent is our privacy violated, is it legal for the smartphone to know when and where (including with whom) I sleep, is it legal for the smartphone to know if I use adult applications or if I pass by the corner bar every day before I go home? Fortunately, the evolution of mobile operating systems has led to the request and obtaining of specific permissions to users in order to give access to certain information. The answers we find are always related to the search for that holy grail mentioned above... the more information, the more qualified and the better the design and execution of campaigns I will make.
Asking is fine, but you always have to give something back
When, a few years ago, Google started telling us how long it was to get to our work or if you were going to find a huge traffic jam on your way home, everyone was fascinated; not only was this an innovative idea, but this information was of great value to users. The counterpart, of course, was having the smartphone's geolocation services enabled. Gradually, Google started to position more information directly related to the terminal user. Thanks to my Gmail account, I have a reminder of when my next flight leaves, thanks to my calendar, I am reminded that I must leave in 10 minutes maximum so as not to be late for my doctor's appointment or that the day after tomorrow is my friend Pedro's wedding anniversary or birthday.
Today Google has so much information that you could say it knows you better than your own mother. As colours are for everyone, there are still detractors of this type of practice, but the majority have welcomed these initiatives as the day-to-day interaction with our terminal. What is the strategy of Google or companies such as Amazon or Facebook, all of which are benchmarks in the field of information management? To give real value to each piece of information it provides to its users.
It is clear that, if the information Google gave us was not of value to us, we would certainly stop paying the price we are paying.
Information access permissions: a question of value and user experience
However, despite the fact that many other applications try to generate value in communications for their users by obtaining information in return, users generate a lot of barriers that do not rise when it comes to any of the information giants. Why?
The answer is basically based on two key aspects, value added, either need-based or incremental, and user experience. It is clear that regular Facebook users see a need to use this platform and therefore decide to pay a certain price for its use. The incremental value provided by Google's geolocation-based information, as we have said, comes at a price. And on the other hand the user experience, the user has to perceive the value before the prejudice.
It is normal that, if a user downloads an application and on the first screen of it has to accept one hundred legal conditions and access to ten different information permissions, the application is immediately deleted. An application that tries to get information from the user must be built on a strategy that analyzes and assesses which is the customer journey that each one is going to have in the application. Know exactly what is the differential value of the application and build the need towards the user, so that the counterpart is seen by the user as something totally assimilable and necessary.
This strategy should be built around the need for information and how to request it from the user. The most relevant and privacy-sensitive information should always be requested clearly and directly from the user, while less relevant information may be masked in the context of the application.
The user is the owner of his information and therefore we should only ask for it when we really need it, we should also be clear with our users and put on the table what will be the benefits of giving us access to certain information and what will be the compensations of not giving us such access. We should not force the user, he is the owner of the decision and we should only educate and guide him to see in our request something reasonable.
Many times the way to ask a certain permission to the user for access to a certain information depends entirely on the operating system and we are not able to cover this request in the appropriate way, putting it in value and context. In those cases, we must always be ahead of the operating system itself, preparing and encouraging the user to generate a positive environment for the cold and neutral reaction generated by the operating system.
When all else fails
Of course, even if we design the best strategy for requesting information and provide significant value to the user, he, incomprehensibly, denies us access to a plot of information so vital to us. In these cases the feedback is the key, since whenever a user denies something we must try to get him to give us some kind of explanation, in order to refine our strategy.
In addition, there are two important points: reminding the user what he is missing and of course giving him the option to reconsider his actions, facilitating access to the denied permission.
So... do I allow or deny access to the information?
Perceived value is the key to answering this question. If the perceived value is higher than the counterpart, you will certainly be on the side of acceptance, if on the contrary you doubt the perceived value, you will go to denial and presumably you could conclude that the particular application is not for you and therefore is susceptible to being eliminated.
On the other hand, the surrounding information and permits should not be slabs hanging over our heads. Applications should be able to manage the free will of their users, living with the alternation of enabling and denying those portions of information.
If a user denies a permit, ask yourself why, whether the approach in the application was correct or whether the value provided is sufficient for what is being demanded. The user is increasingly demanding and therefore will ask more for less, so the key is to convert the value into the user's recurring need.
The clearest example is Whatsapp. The need created to the users of Whatsapp is so great and the counterpart is so concealed, that we accept its use in a natural and recurrent way.
Despite the controversy that is always generated around our privacy, we must remember that there are legal frameworks whose purpose is the protection of the consumer. Any application that violates these legal frameworks is first of all liable to be denounced, and secondly to be eliminated from the markets and terminals.
In short, everyone values their privacy differently and the perceived value of something is always subjective. We are not talking about a big black and white tapestry, but a fine fabric made of infinite grey threads where everyone weaves their own decisions.
