Since the start of the 2010s, there has been an emphasis on the protection of internet users’ data due to the world becoming more digitally centered and the increase in cyber theft.
As a result of the increased safety measures, multiple data privacy laws are now in place that affects digital marketers and their customer acquisition efforts every day.
In this blog, we’ll discuss what is data privacy and how you can adapt your customer acquisition strategy to account for data privacy.
What Is Data Privacy?
Data privacy is the ability for an individual or organization to decide what personal information is shared or available for others. This includes bank information, contact information, location, and online behavior.
With the prevalence of apps and the growth of the internet, people began becoming victims of identity theft or internet scams.
Governments around the world took notice of the risk associated with the internet and began implementing internet data protection laws most notably General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for Europeans and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in the United States.
Both of these laws give internet users in their respective spheres of the world the ability to access all the information and data stored by apps or websites under each jurisdiction. They also require companies that are victims of a data breach to notify users of their sites of the data breach. If they do not report a breach, companies are put at risk of fines worth millions of dollars.
Software companies like Apple, Google, and Facebook each have taken steps to protect users. Apple recently introduced IOS 15 for their devices that limited email trackers and includes a prompt that allows users to have their applications access to user information. Google and Facebook Ad networks are shifting away from user demographic data to target users.
How Customers Data is Used By Digital Marketers?
The most important tool in the box for digital marketers is the “web cookie”. A web cookie is server data that gets appended to a web browser. The cookie allows the website server to identify your web browser as your own.
The most common use for a cookie on a website is helping users log in and out of website accounts. Think about the last time you cleared your browser history and then go to your favorite website and it says “you’ve been logged out and need to sign back in.”
Cookies are used by digital marketers for mostly retargeting ads. Ad networks like Facebook and Google have the option for marketers to install a pixel on their website that can identify you as someone that has interacted with an ad and visited the website.
Once you visit the website after clicking an ad, the pixel appends a cookie that tracks your browser as someone that interacted with that particular ad. That is why if you ever noticed, after visiting a particular website you begin to see ads for that website everywhere you go. These are called retargeting ads. The use case for retargeting ads is people that who visit your website frequently are more likely to convert to a product or service.
Another way data is used by marketers often occurs after you enter the acquisition stage in the marketing funnel. When a lead completes a form, that information is stored on a customer relationship management (CRM) tool. If you make it through the entire funnel and convert on the product or service, your information could be used to create an ideal customer model or a custom target audience.
They’ll look at your demographic data like your age, sex, race, location, and sometimes occupation along with your behavior habits like how many emails or website visits it took to for you to convert and they’ll build a model to help target and better understand users more similar to yourself.
Difficulties That Data Privacy Brings to Marketers
With the imminent death of the cookie and technology companies becoming more aware of the implications associated with data privacy, digital marketers today face more challenges than ever.
For example, email marketers are dealing with Apple’s IOS 15 update which eliminates apps from tracking your activities using Apple devices. Primarily, when emails are sent to Apple devices there are no ways for email marketers to get information about whether you opened or clicked the email.
Google and Facebook Ad users are now wrestling with the lack of targeting options to use when creating an ad audience because both platforms are not collecting personal demographic data. Also, industries like Healthcare are being very much regulated by these networks due to the private nature of data associated with the healthcare industry. You need to apply for a special certification to even run ads for these niche industries.
Retargeting ads as we know them are going to be a thing of the past when the cookie finally dies.
Alternative Customer Acquisition Tactics and Strategies To Consider
UTM Campaign Links
An alternative method for channel tracking with the decreased reliance on the web cookie and the introduction of the IOS 15 update is the use of UTM campaign links. UTM tracking links are tracking tags appended to a URL that tracks the source a web session came from.
An example of a UTM campaign link would be www.yoururl.com/utm_source=facebook;&utm_medium=social;&utm_campaign=reallygoodfacebookcampaign
Let’s break this example down:
utm_source=facebook – This means that this link comes from Facebook.
utm_medium=social – Facebook is a social media app. The medium this link came from is social.
utm_campaign=reallygoodfacebookcampaign – This is the campaign name the link came from.
What’s great about UTM campaign links is that you’re in full control of the information you want in the link and the values. To build a UTM campaign link, you can use the link below:
https://ga-dev-tools.web.app/ga4/campaign-url-builder/
Once you have your link set up, instead of using a generic link for a call to action, swap the generic link with the UTM link you just created.
Once someone clicks the link, if you check Google Analytics you should see information related to the UTM campaign link show up.
This is great for email marketers looking to track Safari users that open their email because there are no hidden pixels or cookies being used that would trigger the IOS 15 data safety protocol.
Placement Based Targeting
With targeting based on demographics being eliminated, it’s now important to create a buyer persona and find out where your target audience can be found. Determine what websites and social media platforms your ideal customers use daily.
Once you determine where they hang out, you can either use the social media network or choose various display networks including native advertising to target your ideal customer.
This approach might take a bit of time and budgetary resources to get the perfect mix to maximize results. Some placements will work a lot better than others. Just keep an eye on the metrics and everything should be alright.
Omnichannel Marketing
Another way to target your customers is by creating a consistent brand experience through all marketing channels. Ideally, you want your customer to be able to continue their experience from your website, to their phone, and when they are sitting at home watching tv. This is called Omnichannel Marketing.
An example of Omnichannel marketing would be if you owned an eCommerce website that sells books, a user visits your website looks at your book selection and decides to add one to his cart. The customer then proceeds to drop off the website.
A day or two later, they receive a text message saying that there is a 10% discount on that book that they left in their cart. Meanwhile, the customer is seeing ads on Facebook and other websites related to that book still in the cart, also promoting the 10% discount.
Essentially, the brand and marketing message follows the customer through all walks of life.
For omnichannel to work, you need to have to opt-ins on your forms and collect information like their phone number. You can also look to add accounts to your website especially if you’re running an eCommerce store, so customers can add items to their cart and you can target them with different messages based on their behavior.
Opt-Ins, Privacy Policies, and Terms of Use.
To safeguard from all the data privacy laws coming into place, it is best practice to add consent disclaimers to all website forms being used to collect customers’ information. Make it well known, the purpose of collecting their information and how that information will be used.
Also, you’ll need a privacy policy page. Both these pages on your website also discuss why the information is being collected and how customers can access the information you own. The privacy policy also contains information on how customers are tracked. It lists out all the tools that you currently use to track customers’ actions.
Conclusion
Data privacy is only going to get more strict as the years go by. If you start the framework now to ensure your customer acquisition strategy is compliant with all the data laws coming out. You are already ahead of the game.
