Top Gear: Useful Internet Marketing Strategies & Tips to Move You Forward: What Digital Marketers Should Know About the Evolving Privacy Landscape and Changing Customer ...

Thursday 11 February 2021

What Digital Marketers Should Know About the Evolving Privacy Landscape and Changing Customer ...

Customers are becoming increasingly aware of their privacy rights and placing value on this. As a publisher or digital marketer, use trust to strengthen your relationship with customers and set you apart from your competitors. While many marketers might feel their audience trusts them with their data, statistics show that 79% of Americans are concerned about how companies use the data collected on them.

The evolving privacy landscape

Global privacy regulations. Death of the third-party cookie. Ad blocking. Major players in the digital ecosystem are prohibiting third-party cookies in ad tracking or planning to do so. Apple’s Safari already banned third-party cookies; Google is currently in a two-year transition period to do so.

These terms point to this fact: We’ve entered a new era of data privacy. And the future of marketing is going to look a whole lot different than what we’ve grown accustomed to over the past decade.

But there’s ample opportunity for marketers and publishers. Sure, the industry is forcing you to move away from the use of third-party data. But the good news is, there’s something way better: data that comes straight from your customers. This data is higher quality. There’s more of it, and it’s going to take the guesswork out of identifying your target audiences. It comes from trust — not third-party cookies.

The Future: Earning trust and zero- and first-party data collection

In today’s modern privacy landscape, marketers must evaluate consent practices, data collection, and how to honor audience expectations and preferences. There is a lot to address to meet both compliance requirements and customer expectations. There is also an opportunity to build trust, honor audience choices, and deliver on a brand promise around privacy. Zero-party data, collected directly from consumers, is especially valuable.

Benefit 1: Earning consumer trust through transparency

The most significant benefit of using zero-party data is that it comes directly from the source: your customers. And if you think they’ll be hesitant to hand it over, we’re here to provide some good news. 79% of consumers are willing to share their data if there’s a clear benefit for them. As long as you’re transparent about why you’re collecting the data, your audience will be more likely to feel comfortable providing it.

Benefit 2: Better quality data–and more of it
No longer are you purchasing data from a third party who may or may not have kept that data clean. Hard bounces, poor targeting, and money down the drain can be a thing of the past. And since you’re asking your customers for it directly, you have the ability to ask for more data than you might have through purchasing it. Want their t-shirt size? Just ask. Want to know their favorite color? Again, just ask.

Benefit 3: More effective campaigns
Extending from the last point about higher quality data and more of it, collecting zero-party data allows you to increase personalized campaigns across all stages of the customer buyer journey. Information such as purchase intentions and preferences are useful to improve your personalization strategy and help build a more accurate picture of who exactly your customer is.

The benefits are clear. Capturing your audiences’ intentions, interests, motivations, and preferences at scale allow your brand to create a truly personalized experience for each customer. And being a brand that’s transparent about your intentions with data tells your customers you’re an organization they can trust.

ROI of consent and preference management
According to research from the Data & Marketing Association (DMA), companies who invest in preference management find a 40X return on investment(£40 for £1 spent).

The report highlights the impact of investing in consent and preference management systems in reaching marketing goals and found that marketers estimate that for every £1 spent on consent and preference management systems they receive value of more than £40 in return. Consent and preference management ROI is clear, but marketers can also expect more than just revenue return by investing in a customer data management system: the report also found they found positive increases over 12 months in the following areas: