Getting information from your Web customers isn't easy, but the really hard part kicks in after you have that info. What is your company's responsibility where sharing and protecting customer data is concerned? After your company has a customer's name, address, birth date, favourite breed of dog, credit card number, and so on--you must keep that data private. This will help avoid the media frenzy that occurs every time a cracker nabs a batch of credit card numbers, but protecting customers' privacy also involves taking care in how your company and its partners use the information.
Collecting customer data
Web sites collect information about customers in three main ways: registration, transactions, or promotions. Another method is supplementing customer-supplied data with information provided by a data overlay service. John Sheldon is director of eBusiness architecture for Dialogos, a consulting firm that helps businesses with their privacy efforts as part of their CRM strategy. According to Sheldon, "These services, with an email address, name and address, or phone number, can say who that person is and provide 300, 500, or more attributes," such as the number of children in the household or the type of car the family has.
Data overlay services let you acquire information without burdening users with a ton of questions, and they can provide details that a customer might be unwilling to share. Data overlay services can be effective for real-time online promotions. Companies that provide these databases include Acxiom and Trans Union. Depending on the data elements being appended and the volume, prices will run from US$35 to $100 per 1,000 records.
