Brands are failing to deliver accurate data-driven targeting, with the result that many consumers actively try to avoid sharing personal data, a new study says.

Key findings

• Two-thirds (66%) of UK consumers hear from brands digitally six or more times per day, according to a report* from enterprise customer data platform Treasure Data.
• But 88% of them claim that half or less of the content they receive is relevant to them; and one in five (19%) said none of the content they receive was of relevance at all.
• Half (51%) deliberately try to withhold their personal data from brands; and almost a third (31%) indicated they would prefer to remain completely anonymous from brands.

A data-trust gap 

While there may be a chicken and egg element to some of this – targeting is poor because consumers have given inaccurate information in the first place – the fact remains that consumers are drowning in a sea of allegedly data-driven communications. Brands clearly need to do better with what is a crucial part of the customer experience.

But that may be difficult as the same research finds that the C-suite is blind to these issues, with more than three-quarters (79%) of UK senior executives believing that their customers trust them with their personal data.

It’s unclear why they should think that – in the UK, almost two-thirds (63%) of the C-suite reported that their organisation had experienced a data breach and a third of those said it happened in the past year or six months. Forty percent of C-suite respondents also admitted that a lack of consumer trust to provide their personal data will be one of the biggest barriers to customer understanding over the next 12 months.

Does data sharing matter? 

It’s understandable that annoyed consumers might limit their data sharing in the hope of stemming the tide of irrelevant communications, but it’s such a part of people’s lives that many have learned to simply tune it out. One day a genuine tipping point may be reached, but whether the safe and effective use of customer data is really a “key differentiator for shoppers”, as Treasure Data suggests, is open to question.