Personalization has been hailed as the top marketing tactic to win over consumers. However, as the regulatory landscape changes with consumer data legislation like the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), brands must navigate a new reality in the face of increasingly tight grips on consumer data. How can brands acquire new, permission-based data to fuel personalized marketing?
Marketing strategies from 1960 listed the 4 P's of marketing as place, price, product, and promotion. Nearly 60 years later, there's a new list of 4 P's that marketers must adhere to, or risk violating customer trust and loyalty.
1. Privacy
Once privacy-relaxed, US consumers are now more data conscious than ever before. While 62% of consumers surveyed by the Data & Marketing Association (DMA) believe that sharing data is part of the modern economy, trust and transparency are now priorities for consumers.
Rising legislation like GDPR and CCPA means brands must become increasingly data conscious as well. These new laws will not only offer enhanced privacy controls for the consumer, but they'll also strengthen the requirements around gathering data with greater emphasis on when marketers can collect and process personal data, and how it is secured. That means ensuring consumers opt into campaigns, and being very specific when describing how their data will be used.
We're living in a post-cookie world
Google recently announced plans to update its Chrome browser to offer consumers more insight into how cookies are used to track them across the web. The changes will likely have profound implications for how some brands target consumers online. Marketers looking to stay relevant in the digital advertising space must shift their strategies to prepare for a world where cookie usage is declining, and perhaps one day, will be obsolete.
Related Article: Google's New Cookies Feature May Hamper Online Advertising, Improve Privacy
2. Personalization
Consumers have a considerable number of marketing messages competing for their attention each day, many of which lack relevancy. Personalization is the best way to remedy this issue.
Personalization still matters
Although marketing experts have touted the benefits of personalization for years, the concept hasn't gone out of style because it still offers significant ROI. When done right, personalization can reduce acquisition costs by up to 50%, increase revenues by 15%, and boost marketing spend efficiency by 30%.
Personalization also enhances the customer experience and increases engagement and loyalty by delivering messages based on what customers really want.
Related Article: 5 Drivers of Personalized Experiences: A Walk Through the AI Food Chain
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3. Permission
Third-party data is increasingly incomplete, inaccurate and breaches consumer trust. A permission-based data strategy is necessary for privacy and personalization to coexist.
Digitally savvy consumers want something in return for their attention and user data. They want to be entertained and engaged. Marketers can offer consumers a tangible value exchange through interactions that conduct research, accrue opt-ins, and deliver an altogether better customer experience. Examples include questionnaires, polls, quizzes and social stories. These interactive experiences allow marketers to quickly and easily collect zero-party data (preference data) at speed and scale.
Related Article: Marketers Are Missing the Point of GDPR — and the Opportunity
4. Performance (ROI)
For marketers, performance data matters. It informs their strategies and campaigns, and they're always on the hunt for new ways to deliver on top KPIs. Where they often stumble is in the determination of what numbers to measure. Many marketers tend to get hung up on numbers like site traffic and annual revenue — but fail to deliver actionable insights about their customers.
While click rate and page views are critical pieces of the marketing puzzle, customer-based data should be the primary focus — and should heavily influence your decisions.
Marketing KPIs that still matter:
- Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): Customer Lifetime Value is hands down, the most important KPI for modern marketers. Unfortunately, most marketers don't have the ability to track CLV due to platform limitations. If this is true for you, dump your current marketing partner immediately for one that can deliver this critical data point. CLV offers a glimpse into future profits by predicting what your customers are likely to spend. You can then target the customers with the most engagement (and spending) potential, which can make a significant impact on your bottom line.
- Net Promoter Score (NPS): The Net Promoter Score asks how likely a customer is to recommend your product or service to others. NPS is calculated by finding the percentage difference between those who won't advocate for your brand and those who will. This KPI provides an excellent overview of your customer experience performance. If your NPS isn't quite where you want it, dig deep to find the pain points that are hurting your customer experience and make any necessary adjustments.
- Customer Repeat Rate: A high customer repeat rate ensures your brand truly sticks with your customers and delivers a top-notch experience worth repeating. Adding customer repeat rate to your list of KPIs helps you to fine-tune your loyalty strategy and maximize retention.
The Cambridge Analytica scandal of 2018, along with a bevy of consumer data breaches and new privacy regulations, have made it increasingly difficult for marketers to build and maintain consumer trust. While the goals of marketers haven't changed much over the last 60 years, the methods of achieving those goals must quickly adapt to the changing data privacy landscape to keep up with the competition.
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