First-Party Data: Unlock Marketing Tactics in a Post-cookie Era
4 min read
Tom Burke, CEO of AtData, explains why marketers must pursue innovative strategies in the declining era of cookies. Recognizing the role of first-party data and email address intelligence in understanding target audiences to drive effective campaigns is imperative.
Cookies are coming to an end. Marketers are still on the hunt for alternative sweet spots to reach their target audiences and are increasingly turning to their own first-party data, particularly emails, as they offer valuable intelligence and high ROI.
Most consumers juggle a variety of email accounts — separate emails for work, home, and online shopping. In fact, the average user has about 1.86 email accounts. And those multiple emails and other demographic information stored across various databases for a single consumer can easily muddle marketing efforts.
In this new year and amid this new marketing landscape emphasizing the importance of first-party data, marketers must double down on finding better ways to link online and offline identities.
Without that comprehensive view of their customers, marketers are in danger of turning off customers with generic messages, wasting time on ineffective campaigns, and falling behind their competitors who can harness the power of machine learning and artificial intelligence because of the strength of their first-party data and the validity of those emails.
Big Changes, Better Opportunities
In January, Google began restricting website access to third-party cookies to 1% of Chrome users globally, following the plans announced in December 2024 to phase them out to all users in the second half of 2024. The goal, Google says, is to protect consumer privacy.
The impact on marketers is substantial, removing a trusted channel to connect with customers at all stages of their buying journey. The good news is that there are proven ways to stay in touch as long as marketing teams have the right tools at their fingertips. There are big benefits to cutting out the middleman — web browsers — and building more direct relationships with their customers through first-party data.
First-party data, according to the Association of National Advertisers, “offers greater accuracy, reliability, and compliance, allowing marketers to personalize campaigns, improve customer experiences, and build long-term relationships directly with their audience.”
This opt-in data is compliant as it is data customers have agreed to share with the brand directly. An email address alone can open a wealth of insights into who a customer is and how to speak with them. The information is more accurate, transparent, and, most importantly, compliant with the tightening global privacy standards.
Brand marketers are using this first-party data to build personalized content so that the campaigns address consumers’ interests.
The reliance on first-party data and email address intelligence may be a big shift for some marketing teams, and it’s a better option as marketers seek to connect with customers and clients.
See More: First-Party Data Strategies for a Transparent Supply Chain and Advertising Ecosystem
Integrated, Comprehensive, Accurate
It isn’t enough to start collecting your customers’ emails or sending out messages to addresses collected months, years, or decades ago. Resolving identities is becoming increasingly important for marketers to ensure they’re not sending out marketing messages to long-forgotten emails or spam traps.
Moreover, recognizing that multiple customer emails belong to the same person or are in the same household and accurately linking that identity to offline identities is also essential.
After all, a general email with a coupon might net a few sales. However, an email that addresses individuals by name and shares details about new items like products they’ve let linger in their online cart and includes a coupon for a location near them will nurture many more. Maybe that same coupon and photo of a sweater they keep clicking on also appear in their Facebook and Instagram feeds.
To create deeply personalized experiences across every marketing channel with first-party data, marketers must begin by consolidating all that disparate information about individuals within customer relationship management solutions and other isolated databases.
End-to-end data integration, or data fabric systems, do that. With it, email addresses – and the intelligence they offer, demographic information, physical location, and the buying habits of an individual and their household can be pulled into a single spot to build a complete buyer profile. Marketers can then feed the information into machine learning, AI, and other segmentation approaches to build effective, targeted, personalized campaigns.
This effort, of course, starts with ensuring organizations collect emails and relevant customer data, following all data privacy regulations. It continues with understanding those customers’ online activity and buying patterns to predict better what they’ll need and want in the future.
Continuous Optimization of First-Party Data and Customer Connections
Of course, this isn’t a one-and-done activity. Constantly evaluating the accuracy and comprehensiveness of your first-party data, including email address intelligence, particularly with the help of an expert to ensure privacy compliance and best practices, is critical.
Just like there’s nothing static about marketing, there’s also nothing static about your customers. Staying connected to them via best-in-class data collection and integration strategies is more important than ever.
How are you using first-party data to build personalized campaigns for consumers? Let us know on Facebook, X, and LinkedIn. We’d love to hear from you!
Image Source: Shutterstock
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