Kalle Heinonen Joins Naviatech as Advisor but Leaves Trainer's House Satama

Kalle Heinonen, country manager of WAA Finland, joins Naviatech board as an advisor. Kalle is a well known web analyst and he has been selected to the list of TOP 100 influentials in Finland by Tietoviikko magazine. This week's news is that Kalle is leaving Satama. And I have to say that Kalle working with us doesn't have anything to do with the last one. I don't know all the details, but he was nominated to Naviatech board in the end of April. Personally, I really look forward to Kalle's effort in next meetings we have.

It's good news for Naviatech, if Kalle has more time and energy for us. It's also interesting to see what will be the next step for him? I guess he has plenty of offers on the table as we speak, but I wouldn't be surprised if he has some business plans of his own. I'm also pretty sure that he will take some time off, breathe for a while and relax before any big decision. Kalle can probably handle very different kind of positions in the field of (online) marketing and analytics, but what kind of job is motivating him and challenging enough?

Privacy Laws Drag Behind

I have wrote about privacy before, and I really have to write again. Right after "vappu" (first of May), when veryone celebrates they have a job and get drunk (including me), there was news in Finland about mobile Internet browsing. According to newspaper Keskisuomalainen (article in Finnish) there are companies who have developed systems by WAP technology, which can track down and save mobile phone numbers of people visiting websites. By knowing someone's mobile phone number, you can also find out owner's name, address, gender and even occupation.

Would you, as a marketer, use this information for better direct marketing? I could recommend one thing: think twice! From technical point of view this could be quite easy and possible. Why not, I believe it. But, in analytics business, we should think and care about privacy. Although there's not a clear privacy law (yet!), at least not in Finland, this kind of utilization is offending visitor's privacy. As a consultant I can not recommend this to any company at the moment. If you want to do something like this, you should get visitor's permission for tracking beforehand.

In business to business marketing, which is much more relaxed about legal stuff than business to consumers, I do suggest to follow visiting organizations for creating a lead list for your sales team. But, in this case too, you should have appropriate terms of usage in place. Maybe a small link somewhere in the bottom of the page in your website... : ) Anyway, I think it's just a matter of time when there will be a clear law which will prevent some of the exploitations of innocent visitors.