Marketeers! We Need to Talk About First Party Data… (Part 1)
After an endless wait, with twists, turns and delays, the cookie apocalypse is finally here! Or nearly is. Again.
Stripping away all the bluff and bluster, the cookie apocalypse boils down to three main things:
- Ads won’t be able to follow users around the internet anymore and pre-built audiences will change.
- Website analytics (e.g. GA4, Adobe Analytics) will still work as before.
- You’re going to have to do more work to learn about, find and engage with existing and potential customers.
The prophesied solution is “First Party Data” and there’s a horde of LinkedIn experts telling you that you NEED to start doing more with it to avoid armageddon and financial ruin.
So You’re Saying that First Party is Data Snake Oil? 🐍🛢️
No, absolutely not. As a career data geek, I’m not here to knock First Party Data.
Back in the day, we used to call it ‘data’ and it was (and still is) really useful for a whole bunch of stuff. But it’s not like it’s a five minute fix either. Some issues:
- When you ask the LinkedIn experts ‘How?’ First Party data is the solution, the answer is either vague or expensive depending on whether said expert wants your eyeballs or your money.
- It comes with baggage. Complex baggage. CDPs, DMPs, Data Lakehouses, Pipelines, Management, Governance, GDPR, PII, Data & AI Regulation etc.
- On its own First Party data isn’t a panacea. There is a limit to what a customer is willing to, or indeed can, share with you.
I’m not going to sit here and say that I have all the answers as there’s still a lot we don’t know and the tale of the Cookie Apocalypse likely has some more twists and turns prior to it’s conclusion.
But what I can do is offer is some ways to adapt to the new world. We’ll be exploring these in more detail over the course of my upcoming blogs, but for now, here’s a taster👇🏻.
1. Open Data
As I alluded to earlier, First Party Data can only tell you so much. One thing that I don’t see is people talking is Open Data.
There are reasons for that, with the Economist calling UK Open Data ‘Unrefined Ore, Not Sparkling Treasure’, but it’s an untapped resource with a lot of potential and let’s face it, if it were too easy your competitors would be using it too.
The recent UK census data is particularly rich containing for including demographic, housing, health and socio-economic data at regional, sub-regional and granular levels.
The price of entry? Customer postcode. We are where we live after all. With a postcode, you can merge census data with your own data. This opens up a lot of possibilities and it also makes your existing First Party Data more useful.
What’s not to like ?Well… one thing . The Economist weren’t wrong. UK Open Data IS a mess. At Station10 we’re collecting, curating and combining it and to cut a long story short, it’s worth the effort. Give us a shout if you want to know more 🤙🏻.
2. Customer Journey
I’ve blogged before about Multi-Touch Attribution for marketing, and the best way to think about the Customer Journey is along the same lines. Touchpoints make a chain of interactions which you can explore and analyse to determine habits. And we’re not just talking marketing touchpoints either… Website interactions, phone calls, logging onto in store Wifi, complaints are all valid touchpoints that can help tell us more about the Customer Journey from start to finish.
On a recent project of mine, a few days of Customer Journey analysis revealed an inefficiency costing our client £1.8m a year. There’s gold in them there hills, if you dig deep enough.
3. Segmentation & Personalisation
Behemoths like Netflix and Amazon have build their brands entirely on being able to appeal to individuals through personalisation with Netflix valuing their recommendation engine at $1Bn per Year.
Personalisation starts with Segmentation… Breaking your customers into homogenous groups that you can tailor communications and experiences to. There are a lot of platforms that offer this as a service, but building your own segments is easier than you might think, provided you have a well trained and motivated data geek.
The best part? These segments will also form the basis of those new Audiences you’re going to need for that Cookie Apocalypse thing.
About
Tom Ewing is Head of AI and Data Engineering at Station10 and doesn’t think third-party cookie deprecation will happen in his lifetime.
Also, Check out Station10’s Awesome-Marketing-Machine-Learning list repository on Github which contains a list of open-source AI tools with applications in marketing.
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