3 Ways a Cookieless Future Will Change Marketing Strategies and What To Do About It
Third-party cookies have become a staple for marketers, and with Google’s recent announcement to eliminate them by 2024, teams must find alternative ways to understand target customers. While reevaluating targeting strategies and finding new ways to identify customers online, keep these three things in mind when focusing on a cookieless future.
1. First Party Data Becomes More Important
Let’s face it, third party data doesn’t always equal high engagement rates. First party data, or data collected and owned by the brand, allows for better segmentation and stronger targeting to the right audience.
“Being transparent with data collection, honoring consent and preferences, and marketing responsibly are all key ingredients to building trust,” explains Adobe’s Director of Product Marketing – Profile & Activation, Ryan Fleisch. “Brands that focus on placing these practices at the core of their business will ultimately provide better experiences and differentiate themselves from their competitors. All of these lead to sustainable success with happy and loyal customers.”
How does a company collect more first party data? Start with current customer touchpoints such as direct mail, email signups, product surveys, and social media to build more accurate data aligned with the customer experience. Engaging quizzes or surveys can also provide product insight that can later be used for retargeting.
2. Retargeting Strategies Will Look Different
Retargeting campaigns can still be effective without third party data. Running ads to specific landing pages will allow marketers to retarget the users who visited that page, and hopefully, that will lead to higher conversion rates.
Brands may also get creative and use direct mail and existing email lists for retargeting. Say for example, Julie visits a website and creates a customer account but never checks out. The marketing team can then use customer account data to create a retargeting campaign around sending personalized postcards to website visitors that created an account but didn’t convert.
3. Evolving Advertisements Using Contextual Marketing
Contextual marketing doesn’t use cookies. With this personalized strategy, relevant advertisements are shown to users based on what they are currently viewing, meaning more accurate advertisements and higher engagement rates. For example, if you’re reading a travel blog, you’ll see ads for hotel deals and flights. Advertisements like this will feel less invasive and more relevant. Bonus: Your brand may become more trusted with the publisher’s audience.
Planning for a Cookieless Future
Investing in the right tools will help marketers reach the right audiences and deliver better online experiences. Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform gathers known and unknown data to build a customer profile that is updated in real time. This can create more targeted campaigns and build stronger use cases.
“Adobe Real-Time CDP helps brands manage data coming from many systems and touchpoints in order to build a complete view of their customers in one system that can be used for activation anywhere,” explains Ryan Fleisch. “It serves as a durable foundation that brands can build on and depend on as a cookieless future continues to become a cookieless now.”
Without cookies, collecting first party data will be crucial to personalizing the user experience. If you’re concerned about how your organization will adapt to these changes, learn how Blue Acorn iCi can improve your business outlook without third party tracking. Contact us today.
Subscribe to Our Newsletter
Get the latest insights from Blue Acorn iCi