Focus on Data Quality

Marketers need to know that they can rely on the data being collected to drive outcomes. Four In five marketers indicate that data quality is crucial to driving marketing-led growth and customer experiences.  

But not everyone has access to a reliable data foundation nor the ability to unlock it. Marketers say employee resources and manual data integration are top challenges in efficiently evaluating performance. Though marketers are investing in analytics technology, only 51% of marketing teams currently have employees dedicated to analytics, according to the marketing report.

Publishers reside in two groups: Those that have been collecting first-party data for years, and those that are scrambling to catch up. Billions of dollars are at risk for those publishers without the targeting data to power programmatic campaigns, which represent upward of three-quarters of all digital campaigns globally.

• Publishers that proactively address the challenges of identity resolution, are much better positioned to protect relevance and growth in the long term.
• Future models and innovations in Ad tracking must provide better detail on the consumer’s journey, with consumer needs and expectations kept front and center.
• Publishers that demonstrate the ability to reach consumers at the point of purchase with relevant opportunities and recommendations will benefit from new consumer purchase norms. Adopting best-practice alternative solutions for ad targeting is driving the publisher’s pivot to first-party data collection through direct-to-consumer relationships.

The Value of Direct Relationships

As third-party cookies disappear, advertisers will need privacy-compliant first-party data to understand their audiences’ interests online. And its publishers who understand the behavior of individuals on their websites — they know what the interests of their users are, how long they spend on-site, how many times they visit, and whether their browsing habits have changed. Working with publishers provides a privacy-safe environment for advertisers to buy in, built on top of consented first-party data and without the need for third-party cookies.

How Can Publishers Use First Party Data to Improve Revenue?

First party data offers valuable insights into real-time user interaction and preferences, which enables publishers to sell their ad space for higher rates. The data allows advertisers to relate and respond to customers in highly personalized and more immersive ways. Hence, they are willing to pay higher CPM rates for reliable, first-hand user data.

Personalized experience

Visitors enjoy a personalized experience, and a first party data strategy enables both publishers and advertisers to provide that. Audience engagement, time-on-site, and ad conversion rates increase when publishers and advertisers offer the right content that appeals to the website visitors.

Visitor Segmentation

Targeting a specific product to certain customers is crucial to increasing an advertiser’s return on investment. First party data enables publishers to group their users based on demographics, interests, and much more, making the data more attractive to advertisers. Having access to specific groups allows advertisers to deploy a highly efficient marketing strategy for each customer segment.

Mapping the customer’s journey

Marketers can map the customer’s journey by accessing first party data. Knowing customers’ different steps to convert is crucial for successful goal conversion. By using first party data, advertisers use the relevant message at the correct place and time to navigate a customer’s journey to conversion.

The First-Party Data Tech Stack

The first-party data tech stack serves as the engine for the first-party data strategy. Publishers can opt for first party data enablement solutions that are quick and easy to run with zero downtime. All of this must be achieved while keeping compliance and data privacy in sight. Another way to augment first-party data is through partnership with clean rooms, or tech companies which connect multiple, disparate first-party data sets with no data intermingling, in accordance with data regulations. 

In order to grow first-party data and create value for consumers and advertisers, media companies must make fundamental structural and technological changes. Most media companies are structured with separate subscriptions and advertising operations. However, the future model will be a unified commercial strategy with consumer’s detailed, first party data at the centre.

The past year has mandated a new approach to business. Facing economic uncertainties and a contraction of marketing budgets, brands know they need to do more with less. They need to continue to acquire new customers while also increasing customer loyalty to generate repeat business. And they need to do all that with fewer resources.  

Ability to Target & Help Cart Abandons

There are instances where customers add products to their cart but don’t check out. Access to first-party data helps you identify these customers and connect with them via e-mails, calls, Ads.

While consumers anticipate that many of their new habits will outlast the pandemic, they are also eager to return to a “hybrid” mode of engaging with brands both digitally and offline.

Consumers miss various aspects of the in-store experience, such as casually browsing products, exploring and trying out products in person, and finding deals. It’s safe to assume that customer purchase habits will continue to evolve, with customers shifting back to previous sales channels, causing a dip in digital commerce sales channel penetration.

This will vary depending on the customer and the industry. Nonetheless, it creates a challenging budgeting and planning situation for CMOs:

• B2C organizations have a challenging outlook, as an already extremely crowded and competitive space will become more intense. Leaders surveyed expect this to continue as they compete for customers’ attention and share of wallet.

• B2B organizations are mostly in a phase of digitizing pre-existing routes to market, and their challenge is to stay ahead of competitors who are also evolving their digital commerce strategies. They also need to think about how they leverage demand generation and marketing tactics to drive more value from new and existing customers. Executive leaders are well aware of the shifting digital commerce customer and market dynamics in 2021.

They recognize that this growth and performance was a given based on the customer shift from traditional to digital commerce channels. In fact, despite large meeting or exceeding commercial targets, only 27% of surveyed marketing leaders reported that they exceeded their senior leaders’ performance expectations for revenue and profitability.

Surveyed leaders agree that they haven’t future-proofed their organization. 37% believe they have the necessary digital commerce capabilities to be successful in the future in terms of talent, partners, process, and operations (best practices, technology, and analytics). Specifically, respondents reported that they need to evolve their digital commerce capabilities to produce more tangible digital commerce results. In doing so, they will also need to wrestle with the transformational aspects of digital commerce.

To close the gap between high expectations and future performance, CMOs need to socialize the challenging commercial outlook with other senior leaders. By jointly setting expectations through robust commercial scenario planning and creating a roadmap to evolve digital commerce capabilities, the target expectation-perception gap can be closed.

First-Party Data: A Strong Arm for CMOs

Understanding Customer Behavior

One of the most significant benefits of first-party data is the ability to understand customer behavior. By analyzing data collected from website visits, email open rates, and social media interactions, businesses can gain insights into what their customers are interested in, what products or services they are looking for, and what channels they prefer to use. This information can be used to tailor marketing campaigns, improve customer experience, and make data-driven decisions around product development.  

Personalization

First-party data can be used to personalize the customer experience. By collecting data on the customers’ previous purchases, search history, and preferences, businesses can provide personalized recommendations and offers that are tailored to interests.

Targeted Marketing

First-party data can be used to create targeted marketing campaigns that are more likely to resonate with customers. By analyzing data on customer demographics, interests, and purchasing behavior, businesses can create highly targeted marketing campaigns that speak directly to their target audience.

Digitize  

A regular analog loyalty card can enable you to collect transactional data—such as name, purchase details, location, and mode of payment. If you want to take your loyalty program to the next level and improve your data collection abilities, you need to go digital. According to Deloitte, an average U.S. consumer checks his/her mobile phone about 52 times a day.

Customers are much more likely to engage with your brand using a mobile app than at an in-store sales counter. With the help of push notifications and meaningful rewards and engagement strategies, your loyalty app can help you collect the data you need.  

Be a good steward of data   

Your customers trust you to protect their data and transparency plays a key role in building and maintaining that trust. This includes clearly communicating with your customers about what information you’re collecting and how you plan on using that data.

Good data management practices cover all aspects of the data life cycle, including collection, processing, storage, use, updating, transfer, and deletion.

Use data to differentiate your loyalty program

The data you collect is what enables you to reward customers for transactions now just but also recognize them as individuals and make their lives easier. This is the way you build emotional bonds that lead to lasting customer relationships.