Reimagine Your Cookies
BRIAN ALFOND: Hello, folks. Welcome to this episode of the "Reimagine Marketing" podcast. I'm your host, Brian Alfond. I'm part of SAS's Global Customer Intelligence Group, where I work with customers to find elegant and creative solutions to their marketing problems. Today, we're talking about cookies. Specifically, about losing them.
We know that in spite of Google granting a stay of execution for another year, third-party cookies are going away. And clients, customers, and colleagues are asking what to do about it. First, is it really a shock that these are going away?
I'm sure you've seen Apple's recent commercial showing an imaginary auction of a user's data where the auctioneer says, "it's not creepy. It's commerce". If you have to say something like that, then it's pretty obvious that there's a problem. The tracking and selling of every digital step we take is creepy. And it always has been.
Now, I'm a man of a certain age with certain opinions and thoughts about privacy that I thought were about as current as parachute pants and trapper keepers. But it turns out that those younger and older than I, for the most part, agree with me. Every generation surveyed is concerned with online privacy.
Sure, we may differ by a few percentage points, with the lowest being only 68% of Gen-Z users. But it's still the vast majority of users in any generation that finds this tracking thing creepy. To me, it just makes sense that this is going to go away. Yet these cookies, which enable the selling of your personal data, is how companies like Google and Facebook make a whole bunch of money. As a result, they and others are putting great effort into coming up with a way to do the exact same thing they've always done, but call it something else.
They want and need to be able to track your activity across the internet and your devices. Now, they say they won't track you as an individual, but rather place you in a flock, or a cohort, or a gaggle, or whatever they decide to call it. Either way, you're still being tracked. A group is nothing but a collection of individuals. And even put into cohorts, that individual data has to exist for them to do so.
And I get it, I'm not disparaging Facebook or Google. At least not for this. Because they're serving a very real need to get customers into the top of the funnel of organizations from mega marts to mom and pops. But if consumers are uncomfortable with internet tracking to the point of calling for legislation, and those same consumers are saying they prefer to do business with companies that "know them," maybe companies that spend so much of their marketing budget on the top of the funnel are looking at things a little bit backwards.
Maybe companies need to start re-imagining their digital marketing and putting more emphasis on an approach that provides for deeper customer understanding, longer customer relationships, a better customer experience, and more profitability. Maybe the future of digital marketing is first-party data. We think it is.
I've always thought of marketing as just an extension of a conversation. And if we think about our conversations, the more meaningful ones are clearly the more memorable and enduring. When you first meet someone you don't know very well or at all, the only data you have to go on is similar to cohort data. I know we aren't supposed to profile. Yet, we all do it.
Evolution has perfected this in us as a survival mechanism. And we can't shuffle off a few billion years of natural selection and a few millennials growth of a societal veneer. We make prejudgments about people-- the way they look, the way they talk, and what we expect of them based on our past experiences and knowledge of dealing with others who resemble them. This is analogous to cohort data. Well, you sort of look like others that do these things and like those things. So I'm going to serve you up some messages that similar people have responded to.
But as we've learned as we've developed this thin veneer of culture, if we rely just on our prejudgments, we're missing out on the richness that is the individual, the experience and perspective that make one unique. And that can ultimately enrich our conversations and relationships. I understand it is the role of cohort-based data to get someone to consider sitting down in the conversation, to balance on the edge of the funnel, to consider engaging in a more personal manner.
Yet, companies very often spend an inordinate amount of money on just this part of the conversation. And the return on that investment, when you can even determine it, may not be worth it. And when we see a company that we do business with providing new customers with better incentives or deals than we who have been loyal for years, it leaves a bad taste in the mouth. The two largest telecoms in the US, and probably more, are advertising how great it is that they're treating their loyal and existing customers the same way they treat new customers.
They are trying to address one of the reasons why mobile loyalty is so low. It doesn't feel right when you ask your mobile company with whom you've been with for years for the same deal they are offering new customers only to be told that you can't have it. Well, why wouldn't I just keep my number, switch to another carrier that is cheaper, and will give me a shiny new phone for free?
It's the proverbial bird in the hand situation. And as the spigot of birds in the bush all but closes with the deprecation of third-party cookies, companies are going to have to realize that it is worth investing in and keeping the birds in their hand. And the secret to keeping that bird right where it is could be the first-party data you already have. As long as you don't sell that data to others, it makes sense for a company to capture everything they can about their existing customers.
Then, combine this data with all the historical data you have on past transactions and interactions. This is how a company "gets to know you". And survey after survey indicates that the customer experience that feels like a company knows them is what consumers are looking for. But in my experience, this data very often sits idle just waiting to be leveraged. But if you, as a marketer, can tap into it, analyze it, operationalize it, well then you have the making for an insights and customer experience renaissance.
Now in order to do so, you're going to need to be able to track and leverage your customer activity across all your channels. You'll need a data strategy for how to combine what you're learning with what you already know. And you'll want to be able to examine all of this data for insights into how you can improve your customers experience and keep them coming back.
As it happens, I work with some wicked smart people that could help your organization with this. And if you're looking for this kind of thing, I ask you to keep that in mind. Now, clearly there is a need and a place for third-party data in a marketing strategy. Businesses need customers to grow.
I'm just positing that maybe the balance needs to shift to emphasize using your first-party data to deepen the relationship with your existing customers. And when organizations make that shift, I'll bet that the return on the marketing investment for your marketing strategies overall will improve. Now, I'd like to gather some first-party data myself.
I'd like to know what you think about my take on this topic. Feel free to post your comment or a question. Think of it as enriching the conversation, and maybe we can learn a little bit more about each other. So if you enjoyed today's show, or even if you didn't, you can head on over to sas.com/reimaginemarketing podcast-- all one word-- to join in the conversation. You can subscribe to the Series on your favorite podcast platforms too. Just search for "Reimagine Marketing".
Personally, I'd be thrilled if you shared your topic or guest ideas by emailing us at reimaginemarketingpodcast@sas.com. Reimagine Marketing Podcast is all one word. Thank you for listening. Please consider joining us next time. Until then, this is Brian Alfond, hoping all the important things in your life are good.
