Council Post: 5 Steps To Recession-Proof Your Data Marketing Strategy
As markets around the world slip into recession, it is inevitable that marketing budgets will come under scrutiny. When it comes to performance marketing, brands find themselves caught in the middle of the perfect storm, balancing cash flow concerns and supply chain challenges with the need to drive revenue into the business.
Marketing teams, meanwhile, are having to work harder than ever to stay in touch with their customers as Apple increases its iOS privacy settings, Google phases out third-party cookies, and Shopify, which powers 30% of all online commerce in the U.S., introduces an all-encompassing new customer events solution that expands its reach from browser-only to include restrictions on server-side tracking, overriding the more targeted cookie banner consent.
TLDR: It’s tough out there. The challenges we all face are daunting and complex. There’s certainly no simple solution to all of the above. However, I have outlined five tips to help your data marketing strategy thrive in 2023.
For years, marketers have been able to binge on data. A series of moves by regulators, legislators and big tech means we have reached the summit of peak marketing data and we’re heading down the other side. The demise of third-party cookies is going to make that downhill slope even steeper and the descent even faster. We can’t say we haven’t been warned; Google first announced it was phasing out third-party cookies in February 2020. The problem is, we’ve become so used to having copious amounts of data, it’s hard to let go.
Some marketing teams will put their hands up and say they hoped the death of the cookie would go away. Others are rushing to implement alternative solutions such as server-side tracking and cookie banners.
But server-side tracking—where a central system function relays data to marketing channels directly from the store’s servers—often hemorrhages data. The challenge is that many people are thinking of it as a long-term solution when it could, in fact, just be a sticking plaster. To make matters worse, some server-side tracking may not even be compliant. But while data-savvy server-side solutions do have their place, your data strategy must be making use of first- and—crucially—zero-party data.
Zero-party data, where a customer voluntarily shares personal data with a business, will increase in value as other forms of data dwindle.
It’s important to bear in mind that there is a near-constant move from regulators toward greater privacy. For e-commerce and D2C brands, the risk is a constant game of cat and mouse, where solutions quickly become noncompliant. Any form of medium-term planning should assume that your access to first-party data will be eroded. In short, you need a zero-party data strategy.
A good zero-party data strategy—a mechanism for allowing prospective/existing customers to volunteer data about themselves as an integrated part of the shopping journey—should do three things:
• Offer the customer something of value.
