Amidst the ever-changing landscape of marketing, with the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the anti-tracking initiatives launched by Apple and Google in recent years, experts are facing increasingly significant challenges.
With all these new regulations and browser changes, businesses must adapt and explore new ways to understand the customer journey in order to develop strategies that comply with user privacy standards while delivering the personalization consumers seek.
1. Advertising in the Cookieless Future
We are witnessing the end of third-party cookies in Google Chrome! After multiple delays and postponements, Google has announced its plan to eliminate them by 2024.
This measure aims to protect users' privacy while they browse the web. However, as advertisers, if we don't prepare for this event, we risk losing the opportunity to impact each consumer with personalized messages and losing valuable information to measure the results of our campaigns.
Digital attribution, which used to rely on third-party cookies, has been essential in understanding how our customers progress in their purchasing journey. They provide valuable insights into the effectiveness of our marketing efforts and the sales funnel, enabling us to allocate our budget efficiently, increase return on investment, and drive conversions.
But all hope is not lost. In this new post-cookie scenario, we must demonstrate our adaptability, innovation, and analytical skills. New possibilities arise where we can adopt user-centric approaches and find new, respectful ways to gather data to understand their preferences and needs.
According to the latest Salesforce report, "State of Marketing" 68% of marketing professionals have already fully defined their strategy to move away from third-party data sources.
The key lies in leveraging the vast amount of data generated by our own customers throughout their relationship with our company, across any channel, to build trust and transparency in every interaction with consumers.
2. Third-Party Cookieless Strategies
Despite the recent privacy-focused measures, marketing professionals can implement other methods and tools that allow us to establish a more cohesive customer journey, continue capturing high-quality data, measure the results of our actions, and enhance the customer experience at every stage.
2.1. Data Collection: Zero, First, and Second-Party Data
Smart utilization of data is essential to deeply understand our audiences, deliver personalized content, and make strategic decisions, all without compromising their privacy. This is where Zero, First, and Second-Party Data sources come into play, providing us with valuable insights.
Let's start with Zero-Party Data. This refers to data that users willingly and consciously provide directly to a company. It can include information such as personal preferences, interests, purchase history, and other relevant details. Obtaining this data through surveys, registration forms, or newsletter subscriptions offers us reliable and accurate information, as it comes directly from the users themselves.
Next, we have First-Party Data. This is the data we collect and store about our own users or customers. It can include demographic information, browsing behavior on our website, purchase history, social media interactions, and more. This data is immensely valuable for creating personalized experiences, audience segmentation, and developing effective marketing strategies.
Finally, we have Second-Party Data. This is where we obtain data from other companies with whom we have a cooperative and trusted relationship. This data exchange allows us to create new advertising opportunities and increase brand awareness. For example, retailers and manufacturers often share lead information, which benefits both parties. Second-Party Data helps us enrich our audience knowledge and expand the reach of our marketing campaigns.
2.2. Storage and Data Processing: CDP and Data Clean Room
Many brands are adopting solutions such as Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) and Data Clean Rooms for scalable storage and processing of information.
A CDP is a secure place where we can gather all the data of our customers. It serves as a digital warehouse that enables us to precisely understand the preferences, needs, and behaviors of consumers.
On the other hand, Data Clean Rooms are secure spaces designed to store and process data without the risk of contamination or manipulation. They help us maximize the use of our own data and combine it with second-party information provided by trusted partners.
With these solutions, we can protect valuable information, comply with privacy regulations, gain insights for user segmentation, and make informed decisions. However, it's important to note that Data Clean Rooms currently function as data connectors between companies and cannot be a generalized alternative to third-party sources.
A Data Clean Room complements an organization's data strategy. By connecting a CDP to a Data Clean Room, a brand can anonymize and analyze first-party data along with second-party sources. Together, a Data Clean Room and a CDP enable marketing teams to securely, efficiently, and reliably manage, process, and analyze data.
2.3. Personalized Advertising: AI, Email Marketing, and Contextual Advertising
Contextual advertising, empowered by artificial intelligence, emerges as a powerful tool in the cookieless era. Unlike behavior-based advertising, which relies on user data collection and analysis, contextual advertising is based on the content of a web page. This approach, in addition to reducing the need for personal data collection, provides a more privacy-conscious option for users.
By displaying ads related to the content of the page, the relevance and usefulness of advertising for users are significantly increased. This improves their experience and encourages greater interaction with the ads, thereby boosting the performance of advertising campaigns.
Artificial intelligence plays a crucial role in the realm of contextual advertising. It is now possible to understand the sentiment and nuances of content in each scenario, including text, images, and videos. This enables precise identification of which type of ad is relevant and whether it is timely to display it.
It has been demonstrated that AI is a powerful tool for predicting future online behaviors. Its ability to analyze and understand large volumes of data facilitates the automatic adaptation of advertising creatives to the context in which they are displayed. It's not just about selecting appropriate keywords, but also ensuring that the content is truly compatible with the interests of consumers.
Furthermore, the use of artificial intelligence also helps marketers boost their creativity by revolutionizing the way content is created, including in email marketing. This technology enables the creation of enhanced videos and texts, resulting in a more engaging and personalized email experience for recipients.
Email marketing has become an essential tool in any post-cookie digital marketing strategy. It allows for targeted advertising using our own databases.
An example of successful email marketing campaigns is retargeting campaigns for recovering abandoned shopping carts with personalized multimedia content. Thanks to Viewed, it is now possible to automate the creation and sending of personalized videos via email to each user who has shown interest in the content on our website.
The use of real-time personalized videos in large-scale email marketing campaigns provides marketers with a powerful tool to capture customer attention and multiply conversions.
3. Conclusions
In conclusion, the disappearance of third-party cookies in digital marketing presents challenges, but also provides opportunities to enhance user privacy and adopt innovative approaches. It is crucial to adapt and seize these opportunities to achieve success in the post-cookie era.
In this new phase, we can focus more on the user and privacy-oriented strategies. By fostering trust and transparency in our interactions with customers, we enhance their experience throughout the customer journey.
To learn more about creating email marketing campaigns with personalized videos and making the most of this new era of digital marketing, we invite you to schedule a call with our team of experts and create a free account at www.viewed.video.
