Essential marketing strategies in the post-cookie era

Google's complete retirement of third-party cookies is imminent. Time is running out to get all those carefully thought-out marketing plans off the whiteboard and into action. Regardless of where your company is on the post-third party readiness curve, the truth is you won't fully realize the impact on your marketing efforts until Google finally flips the switch and heads into the unknown. about it.

With this in mind, we've put together a playbook (or checklist) to help you make sure your marketing plan is solid, focusing on key areas for the upcoming quarter.

Scrub first-party data

First-party data hygiene is more important than ever to ensure accuracy, relevance, and maintain privacy compliance for all users. Data hygiene is more than just cleaning and organizing customer data. To keep your company's data in top condition, it's important to conduct regular audits to identify inaccuracies, duplicates, or outdated information. Please practice this proactively. Schedule data health on a regular basis (e.g. monthly, quarterly, or semi-annually).

Implement processes to verify the quality of incoming data, as well as remove old and duplicate records, and Standardize data formats across your database. All of this helps with data accuracy and more effective segmentation, allowing you to benefit from identifying inactive or disengaged customers in your re-engagement campaigns.

Boost engagement with zero-party data

Maximize zero-party data collection with every customer interaction. While first-party data reveals “who” your customers are, zero-party data digs deeper and captures your customers’ direct input about their preferences and desire for engagement.

Customers often share this explicit information in exchange for customized experiences, targeted recommendations, or exclusive benefits, strengthening the personal connection between your brand and your audience.

Find your marketing sweet spot within the ID funnel

Conduct a comprehensive assessment of your marketing efforts to identify where identity plays a key role. It's important to determine at what stage of the funnel your advertising investments will be utilized to provide the greatest return.

Does targeting at the individual level really benefit your business, or does broader targeting, such as the household or designated market area (DMA) level, without incurring the additional costs associated with granular one-to-one marketing? Consider whether it is enough to generate revenue.

Performing this analysis is neither quick nor easy. Investing the time of a data analyst, whether in-house or outsourced, is invaluable in clarifying the components of your marketing identity that rely on your data.

What marketers often overlook is that despite conversion metrics evidence that top-of-funnel awareness and mid-funnel targeting often yield superior return on ad spend (ROAS), one-to-one The belief is that marketing is important. The importance of identity varies. It's very important, but not necessarily as much as assumed.

The goal is to identify the optimal intersection, or sweet spot, where ad and data spend is most efficiently allocated, focusing on the channels and campaigns that provide the greatest bang for the buck.

Dig deeper: What is identity resolution? How are platforms adapting to changes in privacy?

Test independent identifiers outside the walled garden.

Perhaps you've started testing alternative identifiers to prepare for a future without third-party cookies. While many indie IDs exist outside of walled gardens, we've selected a few alternative ID solutions that are emerging as leaders. These alternatives aim to balance user privacy with the need for personalized advertising and measurement.

Below is a short list of leading digital marketing IDs and frameworks to replace third-party cookie tracking.

Unified ID 2.0 (UID 2.0)

Originally launched by The Trade Desk, UID 2.0 is now its own entity and managed independently from The Trade Desk. UID 2.0 uses an encrypted and hashed email address as an identifier. This address provides millions of users when they log in or register on her website.

It is designed to be an open source, interoperable framework that requires user consent. From a privacy perspective, this includes transparency and user control, allowing users to view, edit, or opt out of their UID at any time.

Authenticated Traffic Solution (ATS)

ATS, developed by LiveRamp, allows publishers to attach ID information to ad requests using encrypted and anonymized email addresses, facilitating people-based marketing without the use of third-party cookies. It will be.

LiveRamp leverages the largest independent ID graph to assign anonymized pseudonymous identifiers to individuals and households. This requires user consent and ensures compliance with privacy regulations.

ID5 universal ID

ID5's solutions rely on deep reach and partnerships with publishers around the world. They leveraged their extensive relationships with publishers to develop shared identity services for publishers, advertisers, and ad tech platforms.

Provides a standardized ID that can be used across sites and platforms to strengthen user identification, respect privacy and consent, and comply with GDPR, CCPA, and other privacy regulations.

Let's dig deeper: Alternatives to third-party cookies: Current status

Work with measurement and attribution without third-party cookies

Accurate measurement and attribution has always been a complex task, made even more so by the phasing out of third-party cookies. Increasing consumer privacy has led to even greater signal loss, forcing marketers to move away from traditional multi-touch attribution (MTA) and marketing mix modeling (MMM) as a means of evaluating campaign performance. I did.

As ROAS becomes less reliable in a cookie-less world, marketers must continue to move away from these techniques and focus on the incremental lifetime value (LTV) of customer relationships to measure campaign success . Essentially, LTV estimates the return you can expect from your customers over a long period of time (typically 3-5 years for many brands).

Historically, marketing success has often been measured around channels. However, the contributions of channels such as the Meta-His campaign are becoming less important. At the end of the day, it's not just the platform that drives revenue, it's the customers who provide visibility.

As we adapt to increased signal loss and opaque measurement systems, it is logical to anchor measurement studies to lifetime value rather than just revenue by channel.

This change also impacts attribution models. Many marketers still cling to antiquated last-click attribution models that directly tie transactions to customer acquisition cost (CAC) or cost per acquisition (CPA), reducing the likelihood that an acquisition is a customer or a sale. there is. These approaches can lead to unstable results or false attribution without considering his LTV, which provides insight into the customer's value.

Ignoring LTV in your attribution analysis can end up over-emphasizing customer acquisitions that may not be the best fit for your business in the long run. Attracting a large number of deals through deep discounts does not necessarily result in a profitable customer base. The objective is to measure success against the possibility of gradually building a profitable customer base over the long term.

Preparing for what's to come

We're on the brink of a new era in marketing, so it's essential to embrace the changes ahead. Although this handbook is not exhaustive, my goal was to provide a top-level framework designed to serve as another guidepost in this transition.

By prioritizing first-party data, investing in better insights, testing alternative identities, and conducting deeper measurement studies, you can turn short-term disruption into a competitive advantage.

Let's dig deeper: Why marketing attribution modeling matters?