The Herring Group

Privacy Policy
Last Updated: January 20, 2021

The Herring Consulting Group, Inc., Inc. (“The Herring Consulting Group, Inc.”, “Company, we, us, our”) is committed to protecting your privacy. We have prepared this Privacy Policy to describe to you our practices regarding the Personal Data (as defined below) we collect (a) directly from users of our websites located at https://herring-group.com, https://benchmarkmybusiness.com, https://benchmarkmyprofit.com, rapidbusinessinsights.com  and recipients of our emails, including use of any of our services through a mobile device, mobile application or otherwise (the “Site”) and (b) as otherwise indicated in this Privacy Policy. In conjunction with this Privacy Policy, you should also review our Terms of Use Agreement https://herring-group.com/terms-of-use/ for a more complete understanding of the rules governing our Site, products and services.

1. Questions; Contacting The Herring Consulting Group, Inc.; Reporting Violations.

If you have any questions or concerns or complaints about our Privacy Policy or our data collection or processing practices, or if you want to report any security violations to us, please contact us at the following address, email or phone number:

The Herring Consulting Group, Inc.

1101 South Capital of Texas Hwy, Bldg G, Suite 150

Austin, Texas 78746

USA

Email address is [email protected]. Please mark the subject line “Privacy” so that we can get your email to the right team.

Important information for California residents is provided in Section 15.

2. User Acknowledgement.

By submitting Personal Data through our Site or Services, you acknowledge that we handle your Personal Data under the terms of this Privacy Policy, and you understand that our collection, use and disclosure of your Personal Data is as set out in this Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy also sets out your rights regarding your Personal Data.

3. A Note About Children.

We do not intentionally gather Personal Data from visitors who are under the age of 16. If a child under 16 submits Personal Data to The Herring Consulting Group, Inc. and we learn that the Personal Data is the information of a child under 16, we will attempt to delete the information as soon as possible. If you believe that we might have any Personal Data from a child under 16, please contact us on the numbers set out at the end of this Privacy Policy or email us at [email protected] with the subject line “Privacy”.

4. Types of Data We Collect.

“Personal Data” means any information from which you may be identified directly (from that information alone) or indirectly (pieces of information in combination with each other).

We collect Personal Data from you in a few different ways. For example:

  • When you make a purchase through our Site. This includes collecting Personal Data such as: your name, address, telephone number, e-mail address, payment information, and the products you purchase. Where we collect Personal Data in order to fulfil an order request, we will not be able to process your order request unless you provide certain categories of Personal Data. Where Personal Data is required, this will be indicated on the form collecting your information.
  • When you interact with our online offerings, for example, our Site, or through our emails and ads displayed on third party sites and also from third parties with which we work to deliver our services including advertising to you
  • When you submit a query or request to us, we will collect your name and contact details.
  • When you provide your contact details for the purposes of us sending our promotional emails.

We combine Personal Data you provide to us with Personal Data from other sources, such as:

  • We automatically collect information about you which may be Personal Data through your use of our Site through cookies, pixels, beacons and other technologies, whether or not you are logged into the Site. Information we collect automatically may include general location information (if you permit it through your device), IP address, browser type and operating system, the length of time you visit our Site, where you came to our Site from, which pages you view on our Site, what is in your basket, device ID and device type, and the other information described in Section 6 below. We use this information to deliver country specific content to you, for example, pages of the Site to you, our tailored ads and targeted marketing communications.

5. Use of Your Personal Data.

We use your information, including your Personal Data for the following purposes:

  • Recommend to you on the Site, using your email products that are available on our Site and in your size to help to promote our business and tailor our advertising to you;
  • identify you as a user in our system to respond to requests which you may send to us, promote our business, help tailor our Site and advertising to you, take steps to help secure the Site and monitor performance of the Site itself. We do this by automatically collecting your IP address and/or generating a unique ID and using cookies and other similar technologies which allow us to know that you have landed on the Site;
  • provide you with a streamlined checkout experience to respond to a request from you to buy products, provide our Products to you, protect and secure our business and deliver our ads and a smooth customer experience to you. We will use the details you provide to us and information we collect automatically via cookies;
  • process and fulfil your orders or contact you concerning the status of an order to provide the products to you and respond to your requests and to help ensure a good customer experience using the details you submit when you place an order or when you reach out to us (which may include your name, email and shipping address and payment information);
  • provide improved administration of our Site and services to protect, secure and promote our business and deliver a smooth customer experience to you by using the information you provide directly to us and that which we collect automatically;
  • to improve the quality of experience when you interact with our Website and emails, to respond to a request from you when you are purchasing or taking steps to purchase our products and to protect and secure our business and deliver a smooth customer experience. Similar to the above we do this using both the information you provide directly to us and the information we collect automatically;
  • send you a welcome e-mail to verify ownership of the e-mail address provided when your Account was created to protect and secure our Site and services requested by you;
  • respond to your inquiries related to employment opportunities or other requests;
  • provide you with targeted offers and advertising, including on the Site, e-mail, and to contact you about upcoming sales, promotions, offers and product information to help to promote our business and tailor our advertising to you;
  • You may also receive our offers in advertising that is directed to you via third party websites and media properties, including in social media to help to promote our business and personalise our ads. We will primarily use information collected about you automatically or through our advertising partners to deliver these ads. Please see the cookies and other similar technologies sections for further information including how to update your preferences (including how to opt-out);
  • send purchase confirmation emails to fulfil our obligations to you;
  • send newsletters, surveys, offers, and other promotional materials related to our products and for other marketing purposes via email and using your email to help promote our business and tailor our advertising to you;
  • to comply with our legal obligations where required;

6. Cookies and other similar technologies

Our Site uses cookies, pixel tags and/or other similar technologies to collect and store certain information. These typically involve pieces of information or code that a website transfers to or accesses from your computer hard drive or mobile device to store and sometimes track information about you. Cookies, pixel tags and similar technologies enable you to be remembered when using that computer or device to interact with websites and online services and can be used to manage a range of features and content as well as storing searches and presenting personalized content.

Our Site uses cookies, pixel tags and similar technologies to distinguish you from other users of our Site. This helps us to provide you with an enhanced personalized experience when you browse our Site and also allows us to improve our Site and track how it is performing.

Most web browsers automatically accept cookies and similar technologies, but if you prefer, you can change your browser settings to prevent that. We also give you information about how to disable cookies below. However, you may not be able to take full advantage of all aspects of our Site and some aspects such as the online ordering process may not work at all if you do so.

A number of cookies and similar technologies we use last only for the duration of your web session and expire when you close your browser. Others are used to remember you when you return to the Site and will last for longer. Some cookies will also record where you came to our Site from and where you visit once you have left our Site.

We use cookies, pixel tags and/or other similar technologies, either alone or in combination with each other to create a unique device ID.

We use the following types of cookies, pixel tags and similar technologies (for purposes of the list below, “cookies”):

Strictly necessary cookies

These are cookies that are required for the operation of our website and under our terms with you. They include, for example, cookies that enable you to log in to secure areas of our website and use a shopping cart for our legitimate interests of selling our products online and to secure the Site or to take steps to and / or deliver our products to you.

Strictly necessary cookies are required for the Site to work. You can learn more about cookies here http://www.allaboutcookies.org/.

Functionality cookies

These are used to recognize you when you return to our website. This enables us, subject to your choices and preferences, to personalize our content, greet you by name and remember your preferences (for example, your choice of language or region) performing our obligations in response to your requests and to give you a tailored customer experience.

These cookies help our Site work and perform the actions which you request. You can learn more about cookies here http://www.allaboutcookies.org/.

Analytical/performance cookies

They allow us to recognize and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our website when they are using it. This helps us for our legitimate interests of improving the way our website works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily.

We work with third parties to deliver these cookies. For more information see below.

Targeting/Advertising cookies

These cookies record information such as your visit to our website, the pages you have visited and the links you have clicked. We will use this information subject to your choices and preferences to make our advertising and marketing communications more relevant to your interests. We may also share this information with third parties for this purpose. These cookies are also delivered in our marketing emails which we may send to you. We may also work with advertising networks that gather information about the content on websites and apps you visit, your interests, demographic information about you and information on other websites and services you visit. This may result in you seeing our advertisements when you visit other websites and services of third parties. We may also use information collected about you (by us or third parties we work with) to allow third parties to find other people who share similar interests or demographic factors to you and show them online ads relating to our products. Some third parties which we work with place you in a market segment based on your use of their Site and we use this information to also deliver our ads. We work with third parties to deliver these cookies.

For more information about how to turn this feature off see below or visit, in the European Union including the UK, http://www.youronlinechoices.eu, or in Canada, see https://youradchoices.ca/en/tools, or in Australia, see https://www.youronlinechoices.com.au/your-ad-choices/, or in New Zealand, see https://www.youronlinechoices.co.nz/, further information is also available here from the Network Advertising Initiative (opt out information here);

Digital Advertising Alliance (opt out information for website tracking here; opt out information for mobile app tracking here); and see the further information set out below.

We may disclose Personal Data to third parties with which we work with and through which these cookies are delivered. Examples include:

Google Analytics, Doubleclick and Adwords – we use Google Analytics to distinguish visitors to our Site, to measure traffic on Site, deliver a secure service and ensure that we can deliver our content to you. From time to time we may also use Google cookies to deliver our ads to you. This also helps us understand the high-level demographics of visitors to our Site and helps us understand how many users click on our ads, go on to buy our products, etc. Your Google preferences may also be stored by these cookies, for example, preferred language and number of search results you see per page. We also use Google to help determine how ads perform within certain market segments. You can learn more here including about how to opt-out at the below links:

https://policies.google.com/privacy

https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout

https://adssettings.google.com/

We partner with Woocommerce to allow you to purchase online and in multiple jurisdictions. To understand more about Woocommerce and their parent company Automattic’s privacy policy here https://automattic.com/privacy/.

Facebook – we use Facebook cookies and pixels to help deliver our advertising on Facebook. This means you may see our ads when you use Facebook because you have visited our site and to help integrate with our Facebook advertising services we use as set out below. In accordance with your Facebook privacy settings, please visit your Facebook privacy settings to learn more and see here https://www.facebook.com/policy.php. Please also see more about Facebook advertising below.

ActiveCampaign – we use ActiveCampaign as a platform to communicate with our customers via electronic mail.  In order to provide accurate and relevant content for our customers we track visit data that comes from the emails sent via ActiveCampaign. This is done using Javascript code to help us see things like pages and products viewed and purchased, which we then use to send our users relevant communications by email. More information can be found here: https://www.activecampaign.com/legal-center

Disabling cookies. The effect of disabling cookies depends on which cookies you disable. As set out above, if you disable all cookies, you will be unable to complete a purchase on our Site. If you want to disable cookies on our site, you need to change your website browser settings to reject cookies. How you can do this will depend on the browser you use, please visit http://www.allaboutcookies.org/ and also http://www.youronlinechoices.eu, and see the links set out above.

We also work with Social Networks and other third parties to help serve our ads. We identify certain characteristics and/or interests which we expect to be relevant to individuals interested in our products and our ads are served to those individuals via Social Networks and other third parties which match these. Even if you have disabled certain cookies, our adverts may still be displayed to you through these channels. Please visit your Social Network preferences to understand more about these ads.

7. Disclosure of Your Personal Data.

We disclose your Personal Data as described below and as described elsewhere in this Privacy Policy.

We may disclose the information we collect from you including your Personal Data to our affiliates or subsidiaries for the purposes of delivering services on behalf of The Herring Consulting Group, Inc.; however, if we do so, their use and disclosure of your Personal Data and other information will be subject to this Privacy Policy, our group data protection policies and our affiliates/subsidiaries’ privacy policies (where relevant).

We may also disclose your Personal Data and other information to selected third parties with which we work including:

Organizations that process your personal data on our behalf and in accordance with our instructions and applicable data protection laws, for example, we work closely with Woocommerce to deliver this Site and provide our Products to you. For some categories of data, Woocommerce also handles your data for their own limited purposes such as for risk and fraud screening and related uses. For information about how Woocommerce handles your Personal Data visit https://automattic.com/privacy/.

Payment processing providers who provide secure payment processing services. Please note your payment card details are not shared with us by the provider, Stripe.

We also work with third parties to deliver our advertising to you. Please see the cookies section in this policy for examples of third parties we work with to deliver our ads to you online. We also work with companies to understand how our ads are working and analyze their performance and online interaction with them, which helps us improve our targeted ad campaigns.

We will disclose your personal information to third parties for the following purposes:

In the course of selling or buying any business or assets (including transfers made as part of insolvency or bankruptcy proceedings) involving all or part of our Company, or as part of a corporate reorganization or other change of control.

If all or substantially all of our assets are acquired by a third party, in which case Personal Data held by it about its customers may be one of the transferred assets.

If we are under a duty to disclose or share your Personal Data in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to establish, exercise, defend, enforce or apply our terms of use or sale and other agreements or legal claims; investigate or prevent actual or suspected loss or harm and to protect the rights, property, or safety of our customers, or others; or as otherwise required or permitted by law. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organizations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction and to prevent cybercrime.

We may also disclose Personal Data where necessary for the establishment, exercise or defense of legal claims and to investigate or prevent actual or suspect loss or harm to persons or property.

8. Third Party Websites.

Our Site may contain links to third party websites. When you click on a link to any other website or location, you will leave our Site and go to another site, and another entity may collect Personal Data or other information from you. We have no control over, do not review, and cannot be responsible for, these outside websites or their content. Please be aware that the terms of this Privacy Policy do not apply to these outside websites or content, or to any collection of your Personal Data after you click on links to such outside websites. We encourage you to read the privacy policies of every website you visit. The links to third party websites or locations are for your convenience and do not signify our endorsement of such third parties or their products, content or websites. Please also see the cookies section of this Privacy Policy.

9. Where we store your data.

Your Personal Data will be processed for the purposes identified in the Privacy Policy and will be processed and stored in the United States. It may also be transferred to other countries, where laws regarding processing of Personal Data may be less stringent than the laws in your country.

10. For our Canadian customers:

Retention of Data. We retain personal data for as long as you have an account with us in order to meet our contractual obligations to you and for six years after that and/or purchase of products to identify any issues and resolve any legal proceedings.

Please contact us at [email protected]:

If you wish to access, update, and/or correct inaccuracies in your Personal Data or change your consent preferences (note: we may need to collect additional Personal Data for the purposes of verifying your identity before responding to your request);

For information about how our foreign-based service providers process your Personal Data;

If you have any questions or complaints about the manner in which we treat your Personal Data

11. Our Communications to You.

We may send you promotional emails and SMS from time to time (with your permission where required), you can opt-out of these at any time see below. These messages may include promotional messages about our new Products and other The Herring Consulting Group, Inc. news. We may also remind you about items which you have left in your cart but not claimed (with your permission where required) and when you have requested to be notified about items that are back in stock.

Where you have opted-out of receiving our promotional emails, you may still receive service communications related to your purchase or account or services you have directly requested from us.

12. Your Choices Regarding Information.

You have several choices regarding the use of information on our Site:

You are not required to register an account with us in order to make a purchase, but you can do so if you wish.

We may send you marketing material via email, SMS messages or direct mail (with your consent where required).  You can update your marketing preferences by clicking on the unsubscribe link in the message or by contacting us at [email protected] with subject line “Privacy”.

Please see the “Cookies and other similar technologies” section of the Privacy Policy for more information about how to update your preferences for information which the Site collects automatically including links to opt-out of targeting and advertising cookies.

For our customers in the United States, you can request that we not share your Personal Data with our Data Providers by following the instructions in the “Disclosure of Your Personal Data” section above.

The Herring Consulting Group, Inc. website does not respond to Do Not Track (DNT) signals, but you can learn more about, and opt-out of, The Herring Consulting Group, Inc. tailoring of ads displayed on third-party websites by reviewing section 6, “Cookies and other similar technologies” above, for more information.

13. Security of your Personal Data

We maintain technical, administrative, physical, electronic and procedural safeguards designed to protect the confidentiality and security of personal information provided to us. Unfortunately, despite these efforts, no security measures are failsafe and we cannot guarantee the security of your personal information. Any payment transactions are handled by Woocommerce, Stripe and their 3rd parties. Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts of our Site, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential.

Our site may, from time to time, contain links to external sites. We are not responsible for the privacy policies or the content of such sites.

CREDIT CARD AND BANK ACCOUNT INFORMATION.

If you choose a direct payment gateway to complete your purchase, then Woocommerce will store your credit card data for the purposes of processing your transaction. All direct payment gateways are required to adhere to the security standards set by Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) as managed by the PCI Security Standards Council, which is a joint effort of brands like Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover. For information on how Woocommerce and their parent company Automattic handles your Personal Data including your credit card data please visit https://automattic.com/privacy/. Please also see the below links for more information about how each payment provider processes your payment information. Please be sure to view the relevant terms applicable for your country (as applicable):

14. Changes to This Privacy Policy.

This Privacy Policy may be updated from time to time for any reason. We will notify you of any changes to our Privacy Policy by posting the new Privacy Policy here https://herring-group.com/privacy and we will change the “Last Updated” date above. You should consult this Privacy Policy regularly for any changes. If we make any material changes in the way we use your Personal Data, we will notify you by sending you an e-mail to the last e-mail address you provided to us and/or by prominently posting notice of the changes on our Site. Please note that at all times you are responsible for updating your Personal Data to provide us with your most current e-mail address.  In the event that the last e-mail address that you have provided us is not valid, or for any reason is not capable of delivering to you the notice described above, our dispatch of the e-mail containing such notice will nonetheless constitute effective notice of the changes described in the notice. Continued use of our Site, following notice of such changes shall indicate your acknowledgement of such changes and agreement to be bound by the terms and conditions of such changes.

15. For California Residents:

SCOPE

This section applies only to Personal Information that we collect online and offline about California residents when we act as a “business” as defined under the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (“CCPA”).  For purposes of this section, “Personal Information” has the meaning given in the CCPA but does not include information exempted from the scope of the CCPA.  Additionally, this section does not apply to information we collect from you in the course of communicating with you in your capacity as an employee, controlling owner, director, officer or contractor of an organization (i.e., company, partnership, sole proprietorship, non-profit or government agency) in the context of performing due diligence on, or providing or receiving products or services to or from, that organization.  In some cases we may provide a different privacy notice to certain categories of California residents, such as job applicants, in which case that notice will apply instead of this section.

YOUR CALIFORNIA PRIVACY RIGHTS

As a California resident, you have the rights listed below. However, these rights are not absolute, and in certain cases we may decline your request as permitted by law.

Information. You can request the following information about how we have collected and used your Personal Information during the past 12 months:

  • The categories of Personal Information we have collected.
  • The categories of sources from which we collected Personal Information.
  • The business or commercial purpose for collecting and/or selling Personal Information.
  • The categories of third parties with whom we share Personal Information.
  • The categories of Personal Information that we sold or disclosed for a business purpose.
  • The categories of third parties to whom the Personal Information was sold or disclosed for a business purpose.

Access. You can request a copy of the Personal Information that we have collected about you during the past 12 months.

Deletion.  You can ask us to delete the Personal Information that we have collected from you.

Opt-out of sales.  You can opt-out of any sale of your Personal Information.

Nondiscrimination.  You are entitled to exercise the rights described above free from discrimination as prohibited by the CCPA.

You may submit requests to exercise your right to information, access or deletion via email at [email protected]

Notice of right to opt-out of the “sale” of your Personal Information.  Like many companies online, we work with third party advertising and social media companies like Google and Facebook that collect device data and online activity data from individuals who visit our website to deliver interest-based ads to them on other sites and online services.  We describe these activities in more detail in the section above entitled Cookies and similar technologies (Section 6). We may also disclose Personal Information to third parties who combine that information with other information to help us provide advertising to you in which you may be interested. Our use of these services may constitute a “sale” of your Personal Information as defined under the CCPA from which you have the right to opt-out. You may opt-out of interest-based advertising-related “sales” of your Personal Information by clicking the button below. You may opt-out of other “sales” of your Personal Information to other third parties by sending an email to [email protected] with “Privacy” in the subject line.

Do Not Sell My Personal Data

We will need to verify your identity to process your information, access and deletion requests and reserve the right to confirm your California residency. To verify your identity, we may require you to submit government identification, provide a declaration under penalty of perjury as to your identity or take other action. Your authorized agent may make a request on your behalf upon our verification of the agent’s identity and our receipt of a copy of a valid power of attorney given to your authorized agent pursuant to California Probate Code Sections 4000-4465. If you have not provided your agent with such a power of attorney, you must provide your agent with written and signed permission to exercise your CCPA rights on your behalf, provide the information we request to verify your identity, and provide us with written confirmation that you have given the authorized agent permission to submit the request. We cannot process your request if you do not provide us with sufficient detail to allow us to understand and respond to it.

Personal information that we collect, use and disclose 

The list below summarizes the Personal Information we collect by reference to the categories of Personal Information specified in the CCPA, and describes our practices currently and during the 12 months preceding the effective date of this Privacy Policy. Information you voluntarily provide to us, such as in free-form webforms, may contain other categories of Personal Information not described below. We collect:

  • identifiers, such as contact information, biographical information and data about others, from you, data providers and public sources;
  • commercial information, such as profile data, payment and transactional data, marketing data and online activity data, from you, data providers, public sources and automatic collection;
  • financial information, such as payment and transactional data and information about products you purchase, from you, data providers and public sources;
  • online identifiers, such as profile data, device data and online activity data, from you, data providers, public sources and through automatic collection;
  • internet and network information, such as marketing data, device data and online activity data, through automatic collection;
  • geolocation data, such as the general location of your device, through automatic collection;
  • protected classification characteristics, such as profile data and publicly available information, from you, data providers and public sources;
  • employment information, such as profile data and information about your employment, from you, data providers and public sources;
  • education information, including profile data and information about your educational background, from you, data providers and public sources;
  • “personal information” as defined it the California customer records law, including contact information, profile data, and credit or debit card numbers and other transaction data, from you, data providers and public sources;
  • and inferences about you that we may derive from any of the categories of personal information above.

Collection, use and disclosure of your Personal Information 

For additional detail regarding the categories and sources of the Personal Information we collect, see Section 4 (Types of Data We Collect) above. We describe (a) the business/commercial purposes for which we collect Personal Information above in Section 5 (Use of Your Personal Data) and Section 6 (Cookies and other similar technologies); and (b) the categories of third parties to whom we disclose your Personal Information above in Section 7 (Disclosure of Your Personal Data). These summaries generally describe our practices currently and for the 12-month period preceding the date on which this Privacy Policy was last updated.

‘Shine the Light’ requests

Under California’s ‘Shine the Light’ law, The Herring Consulting Group, Inc. customers who are California residents can request and obtain from us once a year and free of charge a list of all third parties to which The Herring Consulting Group, Inc. has disclosed certain Personal Information covered by the law during the preceding calendar year for the third parties’ direct marketing purposes. If you are a California resident and want such a list, please contact us at [email protected]. For all such requests, you must put the statement “Your California Privacy Rights” in the message field of your request, as well as your name, street address, city, state, and zip code. Please note that we will not accept these requests by telephone, mail or fax, and we are not responsible for notices that are not labeled or sent properly, or that do not have complete information. We reserve the right to confirm your California residency before processing these requests.