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Credit: The Trade Desk More consumers today are seeking to understand how their personal data is being accessed and used by companies for marketing and advertising purposes. At the same time, the demise of cookies is challenging the foundations of targeted online advertising. With the tightening of privacy regulation, brands have had to look for ways to provide more value to customers in exchange for their data. All of this is transforming the concept of audience connection.
How to navigate such transformative change was the subject of the first Future of Marketing event powered by The Trade Desk in Sydney in June. The evening soiree, facilitated by CMO, featured a panel of senior marketing and growth leaders from Suncorp, Finder, Marley Spoon and The Trade Desk, who shared how they’re rethinking data, digital and campaign strategies to supercharge the next wave of digital marketing success.
Credit: The Trade Desk It was evident panellists have a firm eye on better capturing and utilising first-party data sets to improve customer and audience connections. Finder’s head of growth, Jennifer Snell, said the comparison site has been on a journey to transition from sizeable anonymous website and traffic data towards knowing its audiences. To do this, they’ve launched a membership offering to gather more valuable insights and using that to personalise content and experiences.
“The way we've approached it is not as a data play, but how we have a deeper relationship with customers, and how we add value,” Snell told attendees. “Part of that equation means getting to know customers better. In my opinion, it’s about what you need to deepen the relationship and build a positive relationship with the consumer, as opposed to just building up data.”
While its acquisition strategy is broad, Marley Spoon chief growth and marketing officer, Kate Whitney, said the international subscription-based meal business is constantly tapping into clues and triggers in consumer behaviour using data in the re-activation phase.
Credit: The Trade Desk “Where first-party data comes in for us is once you’ve tried us,” Whitney said. “Perhaps you've decided not to sign up now, or you’re going on holiday and cancelled your subscription. The data science from our great team up in Germany who activate this for us uses all the clues and triggers to get you back again.
“You might innocuously be going about your day and see a re-activation message from us. That’s where the audience set comes in and our first-party data. We deliver to over a million households worldwide, so we have front door information, email and credit card. The only thing we don’t capture is age. This gives us really good access to customers, and we know when they’re transacting so we can be responsive. We also have Everyday Rewards hooked in, plus Upstreet’s share rewards platform, so we're starting to get a pretty good data system going, which we use for reactivation more than activation.”
Whitney said Marley Spoon plans to further use these triggers through its own customer data platform (CDP), coming online this year.
Such investments into alternative ways of powering data-driven marketing are paramount. Because even while acknowledging cookies are on their way out, many brands clearly still rely on them for advertising activity and marketing measurement.
Credit: The Trade Desk CMO’s latest State of the CMO 2022 research highlights the importance senior marketers are now placing on moving from third-party data sources to first-party data sources in the next year. Half of respondents cited the shift as important, 24 per cent said it’s somewhat important, and only 6 per cent had already moved away from third-party data sources.
Yet Adobe research paints a stark picture of actual preparedness. About 60 per cent of personalisation is still dependent on third-party cookies today, and only one-third of marketers feel they are ready to cope with the loss of cookies.
Positioning the shift away from third-party cookies in a positive light, The Trade Desk GM, James Bayes, said the perception that digital marketing will lose the ability to target and measure impact is a misnomer.
Credit: The Trade Desk “Given the responsibility as a brand around permissions, data governance, consumer protection and making sure you have all of that stuff laddered up, it’s hard not to see cookie deprecation as a really good thing from a consumer perspective,” he said. “And while your datasets might get smaller, we think the impact of what you have and the way you're able to use it will become more impactful over time, rather than the other way around. We’ll just wash out some of the messier, less reputable stuff within the industry.”
But Bayes cautioned brands from simply hoping a technical solution will come along to replace cookies. Instead he encouraged brands to invest in owned data strategies in order to power next-generation audience connection.
“Not preparing is ignoring the opportunity to be able to use that and connect to those things and experiences for consumers across all of these channels,” he said. “It's really important as brands that we're thinking holistically of our data across direct and CRM but also above-the-line marketing, so we're creating holistic strategies across all of our activities.”
As a banking and insurance provider, Suncorp ostensibly knows everything from how many coffees an individual might buy to the car they drive and repeat purchasing patterns. But linking such customer insight through to marketing activity, removing reliance on third-party cookies and tighter privacy protocols have made first-party data investment in the marketing function an imperative.
Credit: The Trade Desk Three-and-a-half years ago, EGM of brand and marketing, Mim Haysom, commenced work to develop a data and personalisation transformation roadmap.
“That enabled us to set ourselves up to be able to manage what was coming better. As part of that, we built a business case for a customer data platform,” Haysom said. “It took me about a year to write the business case solidly enough that the organisation understood how critical investing in a customer data platform was going to be. We’re now in quite a strong place because we had the forethought to do it.
“I hear some marketers and organisations saying it will be alright, this industry changes all the time and it’ll sort itself out. I worry for you. We've all got to really think about our data, how are we going to use it, the responsibility we carry for our customers and if we’re set up the right way. Because we weren’t. Our offline and online knowledge of customer interactions wasn't joined up, and we didn't have a single view of the customer. So while we had loads of data, we couldn't activate it to its full potential. Now we can.”
The combination of owned data and partner data sets is another key strategy panellists are pursuing. Haysom shared how Suncorp is increasingly overlaying its data with those of media partners to better target advertising across channels. With a recent APIA campaign, for example, Suncorp worked with Channel Nine on data matching to suppress and exclude existing APIA customers within certain timeframes of the tenure of their policies.
“With this campaign example, we saw a 23 per cent improvement in media efficiency,” Haysom explained. “Another data partnership example is with Carsales, where we again merged data. That enabled us to deliver more personalised messages to customers by understanding where they were in the customer journey, and what kind of insurance they were going to be looking for. That delivered a return on investment of almost 50 per cent improvement.
“They're just some examples where we've taken the data we have and worked with partners to create better outputs and outcomes for our business and our media efficiency, but also a better customer experience where you're getting messaging more relevant and meaningful to you,” Haysom said. “We're not getting the wastage and you're not getting something you don't need to be to be served up. So for us, data partnerships are really important: They help us activate and use the data we do have to its full potential.”
However, Haysom stressed the need to give customers choice in how their data is used. “We're in a highly regulated environment, but also customers have to give us their information to engage with us and buy our products. We have to give them the option to opt out so they can say, I don't want you to use this data to sell me other things or start spamming me with loyalty programs,” she said.
To help brands prepare to leave cookies behind and recalibrate, Bayes advised marketers to start with an audit to understand their level of exposure.
“What we talk to people about is firstly just having a plan. It sounds simple, but you have to start somewhere. The only option that's not an option is not doing anything,” he warned. “That plan for us would start with doing an audit to understand what data you're using, how much is first, second and third party, and what your risk is to third-party cookies being deprecated. Because a lot of brands out there are really reliant on it and when it does go, they will be impacted.”
From there, Bayes said brands should look at opportunities to connect at a deeper level and capture information about users they can start to apply to the way they’re connecting with them.
By way of example, Snell shared how Finder has brought credit scores into some of its newest propositions to help customers with their changes of being approved for personal loans before they apply for them.
“People might not realise if you apply for a personal loan but don’t get one, it can harm your credit score. So highlighting things like that save people time in terms of applying for products they're not going to get,” she said. “It’s also protecting their rights. And that piece of advice and data from a customer actually gives them something in return, which is really valuable they can use elsewhere.”
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