Recently, Google threw everyone for a loop when it announced that it had given up on trying to deprecate the third-party cookie.
For the uninitiated, for two decades, third-party cookies have been the lifeblood of the digital marketing and advertising ecosystem. These small code snippets track users across websites, allowing advertisers to build a profile of their online behavior. This data has fueled the eerily prescient ads we all encounter today – targeted based on the online content we engage with. Sounds too good to be true? That’s because it is.
Third-party cookies provide neither the insights marketers need to move the needle, nor the personalization consumers expect and deserve from the brands they do business with online.
In recent years regulators have required that consumers “opt-in” to cookie tracking, rather than simply being notified of their presence. Unsurprisingly, they are opting out in swathes. Furthermore, what cookies offer in scale and reach, they sacrifice in accuracy – often misidentifying essential information like age and gender, making email segmentation and true personalization impossible.
Ultimately, for ever increasingly privacy-conscious consumers, concerns are omnipresent about how much of their online behavior is being tracked, who is collecting their data, what they are doing with it and who they may be selling it to.
Performance marketing without third-party cookies
Google’s restriction of cookies has been widely seen as a push for their own solution, the Privacy Sandbox. However, this initiative had been plagued with more delays than cookie depreciation and met with criticism from all corners. Rather than hoping for a panacea from the tech behemoths, or relying on Google’s roadmap, marketers need a tangible plan that minimizes reliance on third-party cookies and sees to connect with customers and drive revenue. Yet worryingly, 75% of brand marketers are still wedded to cookies to power their advertising and 70% fear that digital advertising will deteriorate following the death of the cookie. In our survey of retail executives, 3 out of 5 expressed significant concern about Google’s phase-out of third-party cookies because many are so dependent on them.
3 out of 5 retail executives expressed significant concern about Google’s phase-out of third-party cookies because many are so dependent on them – CMO State of the Union report
It’s clear that relying on closed ecosystems hinders both control and transparency. Brands require a way to identify website traffic without relying on cookies to surreptitiously follow consumers from site to site. A solution that recognizes more of your website traffic, so you can leverage owned channels to send more high-converting, one-to-one messages that drive efficient revenue performance. Sounds too good to be true? This time it isn’t.
Identity resolution links email addresses or phone numbers to the same person across devices, allowing you to understand who’s visiting your website and build a more complete picture of them using relevant data.
“If cookies were to disappear today, email and mobile capture would become the most important functionality of our entire site.” – Molly Delp, VP, eCommerce and Digital Marketing, True Botanicals
Fortunately, True Botanicals, a leading clean skincare brand, has been working with Wunderkind to leverage website traffic to enhance customer engagement and ultimately boost revenue.
Identity as a differentiator
To actualize this, capturing visitor contact details is crucial, but enticing unknown visitors requires understanding their desires. Here’s where identity resolution from Wunderkind comes in. Our identity network leverages existing data to create detailed profiles, revealing visitor activity and past behavior to empower you to personalize your outreach and follow up more effectively.
With this critical information, you can engage potential customers from the moment they visit your site with personalized, rather than generic offers. Better personalization equals higher conversion, always.
Last year alone, the Wunderkind Identity Network recognized over 9 billion consumer devices and 1 billion opted-in consumer profiles – all built on first-party data without a cookie in sight. That’s how True Botanicals saw a 2.4% increase in email retargeting revenue and a staggering 122% uplift in SMS revenue, with Wunderkind now accounting for 10% of the brands total digital revenue.
In a world with an explosion of devices and anonymous browsing, traditional marketing tactics are losing their edge. The key to success lies in identity resolution. By understanding your customers across all their devices and platforms, you can deliver targeted offers and personalized experiences that convert.
Want to learn more about contextual identity resolution?
