That isn’t a statistic on which most digital marketers would like to hang their hat. Just for the sake of comparison, how long would an NFL kicker stick around if he missed 98% of his field goal attempts? How about an attorney who loses 98% of her or his cases? It doesn’t require an advanced degree to figure out that a physician who misdiagnoses patients 98% of the time will probably earn a one-way ticket to the Island of Misfit Doctors.

As marketers, we can and simply must do better. One common reason why brands miss the mark is because, often times, consumers visiting their website are anonymous. Some brands have set up sophisticated targeting methods based on a user’s IP address and website behavior, but that information will only get you so far. It doesn’t tell you who that visitor truly is, nor does it provide information such as a name, verified email, confirmed location, gender, date of birth, interests or hobbies.

Why Registered Users Are More Valuable Than Anonymous Site Visitors

It’s difficult to target potential customers without first understanding who they are. A person’s identity, as discovered online through a registration process, is the foundation for effective customer engagement. Just how valuable is a registered user on your site? Research tells us that registered users:

•  Spend 54% more time on site than anonymous visitors
• View 4X more pages per visit to a site than anonymous visitors
• Return to a site 9X more often than anonymous visitors
• Remain customers 50% longer than anonymous visitors

How Social Login Improves Customer Acquisition

Now we know that registration is paramount for brands seeking to acquire users and customers online. But most site visitors remain averse to the process. Research shows that 86% of consumers may abandon a site when asked to register by filling out a traditional form from scratch. Why? None of us enjoy entering a bunch of redundant information about ourselves on a form. Nor do we delight in remembering yet another username and password combination for each website that we frequently visit.

Social login solves this challenge. It enables consumers to quickly and securely register and log in to sites using an existing identity from networks such as Facebook, Google, Twitter and LinkedIn, while eliminating the need to remember yet another site-specific password. And 77% of consumers prefer social login to traditional registration, making it a win-win both for digital marketers and consumers.

What benefits do companies experience after deploying social login on their websites? Read on for a sampling of results:

• Social login triggers a 12% increase in shopping cart conversion rates
• Social login leads to a 50% increase in website registration rates
• Visitors who begin a registration process using social login are 2X more likely to complete the process than those who choose traditional registration methods

How User Profile Data Closes The Targeting Loop

If we assume that a lack of deep customer insight is the primary cause of mistargeting, then getting people to register and provide personal information is the cure. As evidenced, social login plays a large role in improving user acquisition. Now that you’re signing up new users and collecting user data, the question becomes – how do you utilize it to better market to your audience?

In an era characterized by short attentions spans and fierce competition for consumer mindshare, your marketing needs to reach the right customer at the right time with the right message. Developing a true understanding of an online consumer makes this possible.

Social login provides permission-based access to a rich set of demographics (age, gender, location, relationship status, political and religious views, etc.), declared interests and friends – in other words, the information that people maintain on their social profiles. Leveraging this profile data within your online marketing initiatives can dramatically improve results. Let’s take a look at a few example results:

Content Personalization and Product Recommendations

• Personalized product recommendations lead to a 30% increase in purchase conversion rates and a 10% increase in average order value for a sporting goods retailer
  • Shoppers who interact with personalized product recommendations are 4X more likely to make a purchase
• Personalized product recommendations lead to a 79% increase in purchase conversion rates and a 25% increase in net revenue for an apparel retailer
• Personalized content based on location demographics results in a 100% increase in conversion rate, a 100% increase in revenue and a 167% increase in new customer acquisition

Email Segmentation

• Email segmentation based on demographics and interests leads to a 244% increase in email open rates, a 161% increase in email click through rates, and a 330% increase in revenue per mailing
• Email database segmentation leads to an 80% increase in email open rates
• Personalized eCommerce emails leads to a 30% increase in average order value
• People who register via social login are 34% more likely to open email and 63% more likely to click through on an email

Targeting

• Targeted advertisements secure 2.7X more revenue per ad than non-targeted ads
• Targeted ads are twice as effective at generating conversions from clicks

Many digital marketers know that they can do a better job of micro-targeting consumers with content and offers that are more relevant. For a long time, their ability to effectively segment online audiences was constrained by immature technology and insufficient access to reliable, accurate consumer data. That paradigm has now changed. With the emergence of technologies such as social login to acquire registered users online and solutions to store and activate rich user profile data from social networks, the cure for mistargeting is at our fingertips.

There is already enough paranoia around Glass’s ability to record video and pictures on the sly. It is not hard to image being stopped in the not-too-distant future at the door to a confidential meeting by a security guard, yelling, “Hey, you with the glasses, what are you trying to pull?” Or, how about hearing at the start of a symphony concert, ” Please be sure to turn off your cell phones and remove your glasses before the start of the performance?” Sure, it’s listening to the music that counts, but I like to see the conductor recognize the first violinist too. And it may not be long before the adage ”Don’t trust anyone over 30!” will be replaced with “Don’t trust anyone with glasses!” It’s enough to make me consider contacts again. For more in this vein — yes, even concerns about Glass in the bathroom — see the recent NY Times Bits column from the Google developers’ I/O conference.

For speculation about a young man’s use of Glass on a first date and the use of Glass in other contexts, you’ll find John Lanchester’s recent Short Cut in the London Review of Books to be both good fun and disconcerting. As Mr. Lanchester points out, the use of Glass needs to be squared with the UK’s 1998 Data Protection Act. Back in California, Google’s home turf, as well as in several other states, recording a private conversation without the consent of all individuals is a crime. Perhaps, there’ll be an on/off light for Glass making it clear when the wearer is recording or may be. Also, would a lit up pair of Glass be deemed to constitute an adequate notice for collection of personal information? California’s AG may have a tough time with that one. We’ll have to wait and see (pun intended). In the meantime, I am going to be especially wary of boys with glasses dating my daughters.

But the rise of social media and an ever-connected consumer is fundamentally changing the way we need to think about this customer journey. Consumers, prospects, advocates and detractors are interacting with your products and your brand(s) at scale in ways previously not possible. With all the digital touchpoints available to a consumer, we have to consider the notion of a linear journey obsolete, and move to a different model – one that understands this “journey” will take a different course for each consumer as she moves back and forth and between the various stages. This model needs to exploit the availability of social data and consider the implications or signals this data is sending us to better deliver the right content at the right time to the right consumer.

As an example, let’s look at the awareness stage. What we’re looking for here is an indication that the consumer is aware of the brand and the product, and could be a likely target to ultimately make a purchase. We can get these clues through certain actions – has she received ad impressions, sponsored posts or tweets, clicked on offers, viewed content, shared or had content shared with her etc.? At the same time, we can get valuable insight by understanding who she is through her social profile data – her age, gender, location, likes, interests, friends, colleagues, etc. By combining our analysis of the sentiment – what is being said about our brand in the stream , and first person, declared data – who our prospects are, and how they compare to our existing customers, we can significantly improve our marketing efforts.

If you’re interested in learning more about this dynamic customer journey and the role of social data within it, I encourage you to register for our upcoming webinar: Goodbye Marketing Funnel:  Using Social Data to Build Deeper Customers Relationships  in which Susan Etlinger, Principle Analyst with Altimeter Group will dive much more deeply into this subject. She’ll share recommendations on how to more effectively use social data and give examples of companies doing this well today.

Register Now Thursday, May 30 – 10AM PT / 1PM ET

The net result of this issue is that even if you believe you have impenetrable defenses against hackers, your users and your data are vulnerable if a completely different site is hacked, due to password reuse/fatigue. Furthermore, it’s a rare company that truly has an impenetrable defense against hackers.

In addition to security issues, traditional registration on a site also comes along with increased costs. There is a cost to securing and encrypting registration data to prevent the kind of security breaches that have become all too common, but there are support costs, as well. Anyone running a site that requires users to sign in knows that the number one driver of customer support calls is users who can’t remember their credentials. In fact, Forrester has reported that password reset requests comprise 20-50% of the customer support volume for an online business, at an average cost of $70 per password-related support request. Ironically, the very reason why these users can’t sign in is often because they were practicing good password hygiene and can’t remember their secure passwords.

Share 60% of online users have more than 5 unique passwords they have to remember.

There are hidden costs related to traditional registration, as well. In a study commissioned by Janrain, nine out of ten people admitted to having left a website when they could not remember the username or password they had registered there, costing companies customers and potential revenue.

Share 50% of online users dislike the idea of creating new usernames and passwords.

Thankfully, there is a simple solution to these problems, and that is social login—enabling your users to register and sign in using the well-established identities they have already created at sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Yahoo!. Not only can you eliminate the need for site visitors to create yet another account with a username and password that they are likely to forget, you can rest assured that they will still be able to get access to an email address for future marketing efforts.

Share List of networks that provide a verified email address via social login.

The concept of password hassle, or Password Fatigue Syndrome, really resonates with people when you stop to think about how many passwords you have and use on a daily basis. Can you relate to some of the responses in this Harris Interactive study?

Share 40% of online visitors would rather scrub a toilet than create a new password.

Using social login, marketers can instantly gain permission-based access to the profile data they care about – rich demographic data and interests straight from a consumer’s social network profile. This data set not only includes a pre-verified email address, name, location and birth date, but also relationship status, political views, hobbies, favorite books, music, movies and television shows. The key is to create micro-segments of consumers who share similar demographic or psychographic characteristics and use them as the basis for targeting.

By selecting the right tools to store and leverage social profile and consumer data, and taking the time to build intelligent segments, marketers can dramatically improve email marketing ROI.

Some of the email performance results organizations have achieved include:

• Email segmentation based on demographics and interests led to a 244% increase in email open rates, a 161% increase in email click through rates, and a 330% increase in revenue per mailing for online retailer Paper Style

• Email segmentation led to an 80% increase in email open rates

• Personalized eCommerce emails led to a 30% increase in average order value for Shoes.com

We share more real world examples and best practices for utilizing social profile data for email segmentation in our ebook titled From Information to Insights: Understanding Big Data Online, if you are interested in learning more.

Complying with COPPA:  Frequently Asked Questions (A Guide for Business and Parents and Small Entity Compliance Guide) has 92 questions covering all things COPPA.  Of special interest are the questions focused on the requirements of the new COPPA Rule, such as the following:

• What should I do about information I collected from children prior to the effective date that was not considered personal under the original Rule but now is considered personal information under the amended Rule?
• I already have a privacy policy for my children’s app.  Do I have to change it to comply with the amended COPPA Rule?
• I know that the amended Rule made some changes to the direct notice that must be sent to parents before I collect personal information from children.  What are those changes?

A thorough review of the FAQs is recommended for a clearer understanding of the expanded COPPA requirements.

Last night, the Technology Association of Oregon honored some of those companies who are putting Oregon on the map with their technology and mission. It can’t be easy to choose just four to put a spotlight on, because Portland has an abundance of technology companies who have or are on the verge of success.

For all of us at Janrain, just to be in the company with the likes of Iovation, Puppet Labs, FEI, Digimarc, Vendscreen and the other nominees for Technology Company of the Year is such a compliment to all that we’ve achieved. And to be selected as the Rising Star Technology Company of the Year is a huge and humbling honor that reflects the smart, dedicated people who bring their talent and passion everyday to the important work we’re doing on behalf of our customers.

Congratulations to all the nominees, winners and those who devote themselves to this incredible technology community. Thanks to the Technology Association of Oregon for acknowledging the great work we, and the entire community, are doing.

By the way, the Portland tech community would likely edit that common goal mentioned above to read: bring the very best technology to the world, and put Portland, Oregon’s Silicon Forest on the global map as the premier community for starting and growing world-class technology companies.

Earlier this month I had the pleasure of meeting Krysten Jenci, the Director of Electronic Commerce for the International Trade Administration (ITA) and head of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Safe Harbor Frameworks team, and Christopher Hoff, one of the two Administrators on that team. As part of the ITA’s effort to promote a better understanding of the role the Safe Harbor Frameworks play in facilitating commerce between the U.S. and Europe, Krysten and Chris came to Portland, OR to meet with privacy professionals and counsel (including fellow IAPP and ACC members) to discuss the continuing viability of the U.S.-EU Safe Harbor Framework and initiatives in furtherance of the White House Privacy Blueprint. While they were preaching to the choir with regard to the continuing importance of the US-EU Safe Harbor Framework, some points made during the discussion bear repeating:

• Under existing law, the data protection authorities of the European Economic Area (EU member states, Liechtenstein, Iceland, and Norway) are obligated to accept that Safe Harbor-certified U.S. service providers are as “adequate” as EU-based service providers in providing data security for processing personal data transferred from the EU. Moreover, the U.S.-EU Safe Harbor applies to cloud service providers as well. This shouldn’t be news, but to counter questions raised by the non-binding July 2012 Article 29 Data Protection Working Party Opinion on Cloud Computing and related statements made by certain EU officials, the ITA recently published clarifications on this subject to set the record straight.

• In a service agreement between a data controller and U.S. Safe Harbor-certified processor, it is not necessary to include the EU standard contractual clauses to assure the data security of personal data from the EU, because certifying adherence to the Safe Harbor principles provides adequate assurance of data protection. If you once negotiated with a European counterpart who insisted otherwise, you know that creating the proper understanding in this regard can be an uphill climb.

• Even after the proposed EU General Data Protection Regulation (Proposed Regulation) is finalized, the U.S.-EU Safe Harbor Framework may continue to be recognized as affording adequate assurance of personal data protection, because the Proposed Regulation grandfathers in such recognition. Although one proposed amendment to the Regulation (often referred to as the Albrecht amendment) would have the recognition sunset two years after the Proposed Regulation takes effect, passage of this amendment is not assured and even if it were enacted, the sunset provision would take effect no earlier than 2016. 

Finally, even where there is a clear understanding among a company’s privacy and legal teams on the value of the US-EU Safe Harbor Framework and its role in facilitating commerce between the U.S. and Europe, this understanding may not be shared with the company’s engineers tasked with planning how to transfer and process data from several countries most efficiently. Engineers lacking knowledge of the benefits of Safe Harbor could mistakenly conclude that EU law requires keeping EU data hosted within the EU, even when it would be more efficient or otherwise desirable from a business perspective to centralize hosting in the U.S. with a Safe Harbor-certified services provider.

So, here’s a call for spreading the good word on the continuing viability of Safe Harbor and clearing up any misunderstandings that may be muddying the waters for your engineering teams and others involved in planning international data exchanges. They will thank you for it.

What are you up to? That’s a trending question these days. Most people are probably thinking that question when they visit your website. You probably want to collect profile data so you can offer them relevant emails, content, and/or product recommendations. But do they know that?

Unfortunately people are (very) skeptical and their trust is not easily won. Now, thanks to the advancing caliber of hackers in various basements and even high schools, the battle for trust becomes harder each time another high-profile brand has their database compromised.

Yet, just like my fiancé loves her flowers, people who visit your site love personalization and recommendations made just for them. Amazon is a poster child for using tailored content to win shoppers’ hearts, so how do you get users to trust you to do the same?

Tell Them What You’re Up To

You just need to simply answer the question: What are you up to? Tell your site visitors why you’re collecting their data, how it’s going to benefit them, and what kind of control they have. Being informed increases comfort and trust.

Channel 4, one of the largest UK television broadcasters, went as far as to create a viewer promise, landing page and video for this very purpose (see below). The spirited and brutally honest talk show host Frank Carr walks users through everything from why Channel 4 collects personal data to the benefits of drawing in advertisers. The video makes the consumer the center of Ch4’s universe and eliminates any questions about how the user’s data is being used. This ambitious level of transparency catches the users’ attention, helps them see the benefits of registering, and eases their nerves.

Seldom do I visit a site that effectively calls out registration or the advantages of creating an account with a brand. Don’t keep the benefits of registration and data a secret from your users. You should be advertising the awesome and relevant experiences that providing a little profile data could provide.

So what are you up to?

How cool is that?

We’re thrilled to be honored with membership into Gartner’s “cool social technology” club (our words, not theirs) along with 140 Proof, Influitive, Woobox and Zuberance. The report’s focus is around the opportunity that exists for digital marketers in leveraging the social web to reach their online goals, and goes on to recommend these cool vendors for organizations to call upon.

Our motivation at Janrain isn’t necessarily to “be cool” but we think it’s pretty darn awesome to work with brands we all like, know and buy from such as Universal Music Group, Fox, Dr Pepper, Samsung, AMC, Guitar Center and Pac12. In our book, it’s our customers that we find pretty cool because they understand exactly what Gartner analyst Julie Hopkins means when she writes:

Janrain simplifies the process of managing multiple online identities to remove the “digital hassle” often associated with the user’s broad social participation.

In other words: our customers know that password fatigue is a real problem and leverage our social login technology to remove the obstacles that stand in the way of allowing their website visitors to quickly log in to their site.

So, while we’re humbled to be called a “cool vendor” and thank Gartner for the recognition, we really want to thank our customers who make us who we are by choosing Janrain in the first place and relying on us to earn their trust everyday.