The Marketing Advocate Inc. Statement of Privacy and Audience Policy
Revised On: August 6, 2012
Marketing Advocate Privacy and Audience Policy:
The Relationship Advocate Platform is designed to capture, nurture, and profile website interests of site visitors. It consists of a front-facing web application and supporting infrastructure.
Information Collection
Marketing Advocate Inc. is the sole owner of the information collected on www.marketingadvocate.com. Marketing Advocate Inc. collects information from site visitors at several different points on our Web site. This privacy policy applies to the Marketing Advocate website that links to this policy but does not apply to instances where we merely process data on behalf of clients for their benefit, such as when we act as a web hosting service provider.
Registration
Marketing Advocate registration forms request certain contact and profile information (e.g. user name, email address, profession, etc). Some of the requested information is required in order to access Marketing Advocate resources; other information is optional. The required information is clearly marked as such on the registration pages. It is optional for the user to provide demographic data as well as unique identifiers such as a username and password, but is encouraged so we can provide a more personalized experience on our site.
Marketing Advocate only obtains personal information from subscribers if the subscriber supplies it voluntarily. Periodically, Marketing Advocate will include a short reader poll in an email, so that we can further tailor our content to reader preferences. In addition, Marketing Advocate tracks the open-rates of our HTML emails and certain click behavior from those emails to help us identify which portions of our newsletters are most popular with our readers.
Information Use
Marketing Advocate uses this information in several ways:
- To provide relevant, personalized, targeted news and information both on our site and via email.
- To help target advertising messages included in our email newsletters so that we are able to continue to provide our service to users at no cost.
- To enable our customer service professionals to respond to feedback.
- On rare occasions it is necessary to send out a strictly service-related, non-promotional announcement. For instance, if our platform is temporarily suspended for maintenance we might send users an email. Generally, users may not opt-out of these communications, though they can deactivate their account.
Your email address
We only collect and hold your email address in order to send you newsletters and other resource materials that you have voluntarily requested or have subscribed to. You can unsubscribe at any time for any reason, and still enjoy the benefits of our resources on the marketingadvocate.com website. If you ever have a problem with your subscription, or would like additional information about how Marketing Advocate uses your information, feel free to contact us here
Marketing Advocate does not rent email lists, nor will we share your name with marketing resellers unless you pro-actively check a box on our site requesting that your name be added to a reseller's list.
Your friend's email address
Anyone you share this information with is also covered under this privacy agreement.
You may notice that, throughout this site and within our newsletters, we offer you the chance to send a friend an article, resource or a note telling them about the site. Feel free to take advantage of these opportunities because your friend is also covered by Marketing Advocate’s Privacy and Audience policy.
We will only use your friend's email address in order to send the message you asked us to send, unless they voluntarily subscribe to our services.
Onward Transfer of Information
Marketing Advocate Inc. does not rent, sell, or share personal information with other people or nonaffiliated companies. We only send trusted advisor marketing best practice related communications, (e.g., e-letters, whitepapers, and other resources) to our list of business professionals. In addition, Marketing Advocate will not swap or rent email addresses to third parties. This way, our users’ privacy is preserved.
Legal Disclaimer
Though we make every effort to preserve user privacy, we may need to disclose personal information when required by law wherein we have a good-faith belief that such action is necessary to comply with a current judicial proceeding.
Our users are given the opportunity to 'opt-out' of having their information used for purposes not directly related to our site at the point where we ask for information. For example, our order form has an 'opt-out' mechanism so users who buy a product from us, but don't want any marketing material, can keep their email address off of our lists.
Users who no longer wish to receive our newsletter and promotional communications may opt-out of receiving these communications by clicking on the unsubscribe link in the email or email us at info@marketingadvocate.com. We also offer an opt-out mechanism on the registration form or the user may contact us
using this contact information.
Users of our site are notified when their information is being collected by any outside parties. We do this so our users can make an informed choice as to whether or not they should proceed with services that require an outside party.
Links
Our site contains links to other sites outside. These other sites may send cookies to users, collect data, or solicit individual information. These sites or services also have separate data and privacy practices.
Marketing Advocate Inc and any affiliated websites will disclaim any responsibility or liability for their policies or actions. In general, when we link to other sites, we do not pass your personal information to those sites. In addition, Marketing Advocate offers services in conjunction with reseller companies. In order to provide these co-branded services to you, we may share your personal information with our reseller company. If you do not want your data to be shared, you can choose not to allow the transfer by not using that particular service.
Cookies, Web Beacons and Other Technologies
We collect information from your visits to our platform to help us gather statistics about platform usage and effectiveness, personalize your experience on our site, and tailor our interactions with you.
We do so through the use of various technologies, including one called "cookies". A cookie is a piece of data that a Web site can send to your browser, which may then be stored on your computer as a tag that identifies your computer. Cookies can be used to measure Web site usage and effectiveness and to allow for ease of navigation or use and as such, are not associated with any personal information. They are also used at times to personalize a known visitor’s experience to a Web site by being associated with profile information or user preferences. You can set your browser in most instances to notify you before you receive a cookie, giving you the chance to decide whether to accept it or not. You can also generally set your browser to turn off cookies. Since cookies allow you to take advantage of our Web sites’ features, we recommend that you leave them turned on.
Our Platform may use web beacons or other technologies to personalize our site. These technologies may be in use on a number of pages across our Web site. When a visitor accesses these pages, a non-identifiable notice of that visit is generated which may be processed by us or by our suppliers. These web beacons usually work in conjunction with cookies. If you don't want your cookie information to be associated with your visits to these pages, you can set your browser to turn off cookies. If you turn off cookies, web beacon and other technologies will still detect visits to these pages; however, they will not be associated with information otherwise stored in cookies.
Some of our business resellers set web beacons and cookies on our site. We have no access or control of these third party tracking technologies.
Information Security
Marketing Advocate intends to protect your personal information and to maintain its accuracy. We believe we have reasonable physical, administrative and technical safeguards in place to help us protect your personal information from unauthorized access, use and disclosure.
Correcting/Updating/Deleting/Deactivating Personal Information
If a user's personal information changes, such as zip code, phone, email or postal address, or if a user no longer desires our service, we provide a way to correct, update or delete/deactivate users' personal information. This can be done at the contact us page or by emailing our Customer Support at info@marketingadvocate.com or contacting us using this
contact information.
Notification of Changes
If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes to this privacy statement and other places we deem appropriate so our users are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.
If, however, we are going to use users' personal information in a manner different from that stated at the time of collection we will notify users via this privacy policy and its revision date. Users will have a choice as to whether or not we use their information in this different manner. However, if users have opted out of all communication with the site, or deleted/deactivated their account, they will not be contacted, nor will their personal information be used in this new manner. In some cases where we post a notice we will also email users who have opted to receive communications from us, notifying them of the changes in our privacy practices.
Safe Harbor Compliance
Marketing Advocate complies with the U.S.-EU Safe Harbor Framework and the US-Swiss Safe Harbor Framework as set forth by the US Department of Commerce regarding the collection, use, and retention of personal information from European Union member countries and Switzerland. Marketing Advocate has certified its adherence to the Safe Harbor Privacy Principles of notice, choice, onward transfer, security, data integrity, access, and enforcement. To learn more about the Safe Harbor program, and to view our certification page, please visit
http://www.export.gov/safeharbor/.
Bookmark this page to stay current on our Privacy Policy.
In compliance with the US-EU and US-Swiss Safe Harbor Principles, Marketing Advocate commits to resolve complaints about your privacy and our collection or use of your personal information. European Union or Swiss citizens with inquiries or complaints regarding this privacy policy should first contact Marketing Advocate at
Marketing Advocate Inc. / Web Administrator
1600 Falmouth Road, Suite 17
Centerville, MA 02632-2933
(508) 775-9064
info@marketingadvocate.com
Marketing Advocate has further committed to refer unresolved privacy complaints under the US-EU and US-Swiss Safe Harbor Principles to an independent dispute resolution mechanism, the BBB EU SAFE HARBOR, operated by the Council of Better Business Bureaus. If you do not receive timely acknowledgment of your complaint or if your complaint is not satisfactorily addressed by Marketing Advocate please visit the BBB EU SAFE HARBOR web site at
www.bbb.org/us/safe-harbor-complaints for more information and to file a complaint.