Overview
If your product operates in a privacy-sensitive environment or needs to minimize GDPR or compliance risks, there’s a simple, effective strategy: avoid tracking individual users altogether.
By sending analytics data only at the account level—rather than the user level—you can still get meaningful insights without handling personally identifiable information (PII).
Best Practice: Use Account ID as User ID
To implement privacy-friendly product analytics:
Do not send a user ID in your
track()calls.Instead, send the group (account) ID as the user ID.
In essence, all users within the same account share the same identifier.
Avoid sending any user-specific traits or metadata (e.g. name, email).
Track only account-level events (e.g., "form created", "integration enabled").
Why This Works
You avoid storing or transmitting any data that can identify a person.
This model aligns well with GDPR, CCPA, and other privacy laws.
You dramatically reduce the complexity and risk associated with data compliance.
For tools like Accoil, you still retain powerful segmentation and engagement tracking at the account level.
✅ Bonus: This method requires no user consent banner in many jurisdictions, since no personal data is collected.
What You Can Still Do in Accoil
Even without user-level data, Accoil can still provide:
Activation tracking
Adoption trends across accounts
Overall engagement scoring
Health-based segmentation
Account-level funnel reporting
This means you can still:
Understand product performance
Target accounts for outreach
Identify adoption gaps
Monitor lifecycle phases (e.g. onboarding → expansion)
What You’ll Miss
User-level insights (e.g., "who are my top users?")
Ability to see per-user engagement metrics
Feature usage distribution within the account
If those are critical, you’ll need to send user IDs—but otherwise, most product analytics needs are well served at the account level.
Important Note on Single-User Accounts
While the strategy avoids personal data, be mindful that accounts with only one user could still be indirectly identifiable if cross-referenced with internal data. This is a gray area under GDPR.
To Stay Compliant:
List your analytics tool (e.g. Accoil, Segment, Amplitude) in your privacy policy
Avoid sending traits with any PII (e.g. name, email, job title)
Clearly state that analytics are for product improvement and are account-based
Summary
Using the group ID as the user ID is a clean, low-risk way to implement product analytics while respecting privacy and avoiding GDPR pitfalls. Accoil makes this easy by enabling account-level engagement tracking, segmentation, and activation scoring—even without any user-level data.