How marketers can succeed without tracking third-party cookies

Many business models today rely on the collection and sale of customer data. However, as high-profile privacy breaches increase in severity and regularity. Now more consumers feel like they’re losing control over their most precious asset.

Cookies are little data files that are used to gather, store, and sell user data on millions of websites. Personal information, buying patterns, and purchase histories are all included. 39.7% of all websites utilize cookies, including well-known sites like YouTube and Netflix. We are aware that it occurs, but we have little power to prevent it. It’s instilling suspicion, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

Policymakers are starting to take action, debating new policies that would impose harsh penalties and fines for violations. We’ve long held the belief that consumers should never give up control of their data, and that businesses can and should create relationships without using cookies. Building deeper relationships with existing customers to enhance customer lifetime value is a reality for marketers today as they prepare for the potential of a cookie-less future. Marketers can develop an informed, sustainable marketing plan appropriate for a new era of privacy by analyzing customer behavior, preferences, and motivations.

So how can marketers build strong ecosystems that attract and support new and existing customers, without using third-party cookies, and potentially without cookies at all?

Incentivize customer advocacy

There are many ways to incentivize existing customers to bring in new buyers without using trackers, including discounts, early access to new products, and custom experiences or offerings. However, marketers can’t incentivize a customer they don’t understand and who they’ve had no contact with. This is where third-party data often comes into play, it provides context for these consumers. But, so does outreach and engagement – by talking to them.

For a strong relationship built on trust, marketers can derive segmentation, loyalty, and sentiment data to help them target new business while strengthening the service and engagement of existing customers. Ultimately, businesses that deliver great customer experiences, without leveraging third-party data, will be the ones who create strong relationships with customers and see greater ROI on their marketing campaigns.

Unifying marketing, sales, support, and success through technology

Regardless of their size, all businesses and departments should use technology that is united and not isolated. This is because numerous departments within corporations collaborate on many projects. Take marketers, for example, who is in charge of a variety of tasks such as demand generation, lead nurturing, and upselling. Unified technology platforms help marketers to integrate data, manage activities, and collaborate with numerous stakeholders, which is extremely beneficial to a company. Without departmental coordination, customer journey involvement provides marketers with only a rudimentary understanding of their target audience, resulting in fewer productive campaigns.

Better customer engagement leads to more precise data, which leads to actionable insights and eventually, successful marketing output. However, none of this is possible without the right technology. Recently, marketers have adopted marketing platforms, not individual applications, that integrate with third-party systems and databases, to gain adoption and market share, especially with third-party data harvesting on its way out.

Diversifying product offerings to stay front-of-mind

There are many products that we buy few and far between. Many of these manufacturers don’t offer products that invite repeat business and customer engagement. Take car sales, for example, the average Australian buys a new car every six years, so regular engagement between the car dealership and customer is limited. Today, dealerships, with the support of marketing, have diversified their offering from a single automobile, purchased on average every six years, to a range of products including extended warranties, car meet-up events, merchandise, and more.

Product diversification is the foundation of any successful sales and marketing strategy – regardless of the industry, organization size, or market share. Marketers will always face challenges, such as being limited to the scope and longevity of the products their marketing. However, making the most of product diversification can increase customer demand and engagement beyond the lifecycle of a single product.

Successfully relocate marketing funds

Marketers must work smarter, not harder, with shrinking budgets across many areas in today’s firms. Business leaders can allocate funds and encourage their marketers to staff up and adopt new technology systems that serve customers, build relationships, and create brand champions who can shoulder much of the marketing department’s work rather than over-investing in a fragile and costly data-driven targeting strategy. This is the recipe for marketing-driven, long-term business growth in an increasingly cookie-less digital environment.

As we prepare for the potential of a cookie-free future, businesses have begun to shift their sales and marketing strategies away from third-party tracking and toward first-party data. This can be accomplished by gathering data directly from people who connect with your business, whether they’re website visitors, existing customers, or digital ad viewers.

Marketers must be upfront about gathering first-party information and demonstrate how it can help a customer throughout their journey as customers grow more aware and cautious of data privacy. Personalization will have to emerge from an open and consensual conversation between businesses and their customers, not from people and their data if we are to have a truly cookie-free future.