Early industry advice.
Moving forward, marketers will have to leverage their imagination and creativity unlike ever before. Marketers will need a thoughtful way to compel customers to go from unknown to know quicker via proactive consent. It’s early days, but here are some of the most interesting ideas floated by industry experts and analysts:
Marketers will target novel channels, particularly audio: Podcasts, already growing in popularity with advertisers, will be a major beneficiary, alongside streaming music and traditional broadcast radio. Audio also offers opportunities for contextual targeting based on the content’s metadata.
“Walled garden” platforms: Gartner predicts a rise in spending with “walled garden” platforms like Facebook and Google. These organizations hold vast amounts of user data, and therefore can achieve high levels of relevance.
Domain consolidation: Ernst and Young expects digital businesses will consolidate their online presence in order to effectively aggregate consumer data. We’ll likely see a growing appreciation for anonymized contextual data in targeting, which can help improve accuracy and relevance without the need for private data.
These are all promising strategies, but they don't quite deliver on the promise of third-party tracking cookies, which allows marketers to understand their customers in a way that was previously impossible.So what will work?According to a recent Salesforce State of the Connected Consumers report, “88% of customers believe trust becomes more important in times of change.” Start where you would with any relationship — generate trust.
Most people won't share their most intimate personal data with a website they believe to be sketchy. According to one recent survey, 74% of US consumers rank data privacy as one of their leading concerns.
But how do you design for confidence?
As Matt Duench, Senior Director, Product Marketing explained: “Prioritizing transparency and privacy means being transparent about data collection and use, offering opt-out options, and adhering to privacy regulations.”
Adobe, the design software giant, calls it “Trust Scaffolding”, defined as "a combination of reliability, accountability, privacy and kind of integrity combined."
Your organization needs to be upfront with its customers about what data it collects, what it uses it for, and how it protects it. You need to be consistent in your language, never over-promising and under-delivering.
And finally, you need to deliver a polished and consistent visual experience. Research shows that 75% of consumers judge a website's credibility on how it looks.
Ironically, you will rely on data to drive this experience — but now you will need to convince your customers to give it to you.
Research shows that 75% of consumers judge a website's credibility on how it looks.
The cookieless age will be powered by customer consent through the combination of two kinds of data:
Zero-party data that customers willingly share with you, such as fields on a sign-up form, their shipping details, or an email survey they completed. This often includes personal data that can be attributed to a single person and is usually protected by data privacy regulations.
First-party data that they generate as they consent to interact with your site, including search history, analytics information, session metadata, and more. Unlike zero-party data, first-party data is often anonymous.
“Brands typically collect anonymous data on users through first-party cookies, but often fail to take advantage of it,” says Duench. The anonymous data stays in a web analytics system rather than being incorporated into a database along with known customers.
“Bringing this data in helps to build a stronger profile of the customer, which marketers can use to personalize experiences and target users with more relevant information and ads. This first-party data will be used for activation, suppression, and measurement, replacing third-party tag-based measurement. However, it's essential to be transparent about data collection and use and to obtain user consent,” Duench added. Please also check in with your legal team to review data privacy regulations that apply in your customers’ regions when combining zero and first-party data.
This brings us to a major challenge. How do you obtain that zero-party data in the first place? How do you scale user acquisition when one of your most effective tools for top-of-funnel marketing has gone? And how do you combine the two types of data into something that you can use to predict customer behavior and preferences?
