As more and more retailers and brands seek to capture consumer eyeballs online and drive traffic to their e-commerce platforms, the ability to know where customers are, what they are interested in, and where they spend their time is critical for e-commerce success. But how much of that insight are consumers truly willing to provide is the question that effective marketers ponder.
Consumers are increasingly limiting the data they provide to retailers when shopping online. And to make this matter even more of a challenge, large corporations such as Google, Mozilla, Microsoft and Apple have expanded upon their protection of the customer and their data. In 2021, Apple made major iOS 14 changes to consumer data privacy, disabling cross-application tracking by default through IDFA (Identifier for Advertisers) restrictions. Consumers are adopting privacy-first browsers such as Brave like never before, while both Chrome and Firefox are increasing their browser privacy offerings in 2021. This all equates to marketers needing to stop their reliance on third-party data and cookies to drive personalisation for the consumer as this data either won’t exist or be as reliable as it once was., Arstechnica reports that 96% of US users have opted out of app tracking on iOS 14.5. The future is here and it’s a real problem for brands and retailers looking to understand the consumer and what they are doing online.
“96% of US users opt out of app tracking in iOS 14.5”
For brands who aren’t aware of and reacting to these changes in privacy, they will be without their typical means of advertising and knowledge of the customer. This is why zero-party data is so important. It becomes a crucial element in a marketer’s arsenal. Zero-party data refers to information shared by the consumer to a brand. This empowers brands to replace all of the impersonal data that they have historically relied upon and replace that with data that a consumer willingly provides. It enables them to personalise and cater to each consumer and, more importantly, is building the brand resonance as consumers are willing to share that information only because they trust the brand.
As personalisation becomes an increasingly important way to differentiate a brand or retailer’s offering to consumers, this trend towards less and less digital body language is going to be an issue. What’s a marketer to do? One tried-and-tested way of capturing zero party data is the use of online customer journeys through intelligent guided selling. This technology solution enables brands and retailers to get to know their consumers by asking them first-hand what their mindset and motivations are. The dynamic question set embedded in the journey captures consumer data that enables a product or service recommendation to be made. The data captured during the process is analysed by sophisticated recommendation logic to both provide the perfect recommendation while also potentially offering an authentic upsell offer.
Here at Conversity, we provide your consumer with real time relevant offers, putting the purchasing power directly with them while providing you, the brand, key insights and understanding about your consumers and their behaviours through the use of zero-party data. As marketers pursue methods for understanding their customers, zero-party data collection will yield more targeted insights than any third-party data set could offer.
