Cookies play a vital role in the online experience, so predominantly used on the internet. They need a Customer Data Platform as it's necessary for data collection and individual personalization. Read more: https://expressanalytics.com/blog/importance-of-a-customer-data-platform-in-post-3rd-party-cookie-world/

1. Importance of A Customer Data Platform in Post Third
Party Cookie World

2. Customer Data Platform (CDP) is a fast-growing segment of the digital
marketing universe.
It focuses on analytics, and pulls data from multiple sources, including 3rd
party cookie services, making it easier for businesses to execute data-
driven marketing campaigns efficiently. It is all about managing data.

3. But what role will the customer data platform play when 3rd party cookies,
providing a major chunk of customer data, become history?
Before we get into that, a quick explanation of what a CDP is all about. It is
a set of processes and tools that allows businesses to capture, organize,
and analyze customer data, so it can be used to better understand
customer intent, improve conversion rates, generate revenue, and help
customers.

4. Coming back to cookies….Third Party cookies have made marketers lazy.
Due to the availability of third-party data, marketers, So far, hadp1st-party
data gathering down their priority lists. But with Google having expressed
its intent of phasing out third-party cookies, more marketers have started
ingesting more 1st-party data, but only just. There still is a palpable
sluggishness on part of marketers where the reaction to the upcoming
changes is concerned.

5. Two reasons: one section is still hopeful of Google coming up with an “as
good as 3rd-party cookie” alternative, which they can then immediately
adopt. There’s also another section that thinks that 2023, the deadline set
by Google for Chrome to block third-party cookies, is still far off and that
they have more than enough time to adapt to the change. But the transition
is already happening. You don’t want to be the last off the starting block,
would you?

6. In the United Kingdom, for example, Google’s proposed alternative,
“Privacy Sandbox” is already being tested, under the scrutiny of the
nation’s Competition And Markets Authority, to see how the whole thing
works.
The present-day system of flow of user data used to target consumers with
online ads is threatened, clearly because of the new privacy laws that
governments and even some technology giants have put in place.

7. As this article in the Wall Street Journal points out, the result is that
companies are taking matters into their own hands where user data is
concerned. Almost every industry, from breweries and fast-food chains to
even avocado farmers, is rushing to collect consumer information and
create detailed customer profiles.

8. You need to rethink your customer data strategy
without third party cookie
A few months ago, we had informed you through this blog of Google’s
intent to block third-party cookies on its Chrome browser by 2022, as per
an announcement by Google in January 2020. Due to its over-arching
impact on the advertising and marketing industries, the deadline was
pushed to the end of 2023.

9. What’s more, it was recently announced that Apple will only let users
access their advertising identifier through Mobile Device ID (also known as
IDFA, or the Identifier for Advertisers). Clearly, cookies and the role they
play in marketing are getting a lot of attention as a result of such initiatives.
So, while the world is slowly but surely exiting the 3rd-party cookie
universe, the shift presents an excellent opportunity for your business to
rethink its customer experience strategy.

10. More and more websites have started to use the 1st-party cookie and even
zero-party data for one reason or another. All this information gathered first-
hand is pure gold in the hands of a digital marketer. The data can be used
to truly personalize a customer’s online experience. And for that, what your
business needs are a robust customer data platform to give you deeper
insights into your prospects and customers, and their behavior.

11. Third-Party Cookies Are Going Away, But Not
Customer Personalization
The digital marketing world has undergone a shift in priorities in recent
years, led by innovations in the mobile world and the era of big data, and
this, in turn, has led to the era of the CDPs. Customer data platforms can
help your business optimize its marketing activities, improve customer
experience, and boost revenue.

12. According to a new report on customer data platforms by Fortune Business
Insights, the global customer data platform market size is predicted to
reach the US $4,364.7 million by 2027, exhibiting a CAGR of 24.5% during
the forecast period. The increasing adoption of artificial intelligence (AI)
and machine learning (ML) technologies to enhance workflow and
productivity will encourage the healthy growth of the market during the
forecast period.

13. Additionally, the implementation of AI in cloud data platforms (CDP) for
predictive analysis and enhancement of customer experience will bolster
the healthy growth of the market. There are two types of cookies: session
and persistent. The latter remains stored on the user’s device until it
expires or is deleted. The former only lasts for the duration of a browser
session, that is, until the browser is closed. Most websites offer their
visitors both types of cookies.

14. The difference is that session cookies are temporary and are quickly
deleted by the server upon completion of a user session. The downside of
using session cookies is that the website will lose track of the user if they
close their browser and delete the cookie from their computer. Persistent
cookies, on the other hand, are stored on the user’s device until they expire
or are deleted. They are used to retain user preferences and customize the
user experience across visits to your website.

15. What’s The Role Of Customer Data Platform In the
Post-cookie World?
Although online audiences have become more active, they continue to
work within a closed ecosystem, i.e. largely Google. With the rise of
programmatic advertising and content marketing, more and more
businesses have started to grasp that a customer data platform can help
them overcome the transition of moving away from 3rd-party cookies.

16. How does the CDP help? How do you ensure that
your customers are content?
Using a customer data platform allows you to leverage your customer data
to proactively meet customer needs. It helps businesses cross-reference
audiences with the current client profiles, track activity across multiple
channels, and identify new audiences that can be targeted. Data collected
from internal and external sources are automatically collected and
managed here.

17. Platforms that collect customer data and related technologies are
becoming more popular. Various technologies are built into CDPs. Among
them are cloud data warehouses that consolidate customer data, ID
management systems that use emails to help identify people,
personalization tools that tailor content displayed on eCommerce sites
based on their past behavior, and tools that create visual reports.

18. Due to the fading of third-party cookies, first and zero-party data should
gain more attention. Data shared by your customers with you is zero-party
data. First-party data is different from zero-party data because zero-party
data is obtained from direct interaction with your audience. Meanwhile,
first-party data offers insights into analytics and user behavior. Business
owners need to focus on their current customer databases, as these are
the data they own.

19. Zero-party data, those details that are voluntarily provided by a customer
for the purpose of making a purchase, is consciously and ethically
collected. Customers want this information to be given to the company, so
this provides a reliable basis for a marketing strategy.

20. How Can Customer Data Platform Help Specifically?
Cookies are used extensively on the internet, and as such, they’re seen as
a vital part of our online experience. There is so much personal data
available through cookies that it can be useful to supplement your web
browsing with some form of cookie usage tracking. This way you can gain
insight into how users interact with various aspects of your website and see
where improvements can be made.

21. It’s also one of the easiest ways for website owners to set up analytics
software, which can then be incorporated into almost any website. When
cookies are used correctly they offer a substantial amount of information
that can be used to better understand user behavior. Because of this,
cookies are an integral part of the customer data platform. Therefore, if you
are to survive the new 3rd-party “cookieless” era, you must manage your
own first-party data effectively.

22. Utilizing first and zero-party data, CDPs can build personalized customer
profiles that enable you to meet buyers and prospects where, when, and
how they want. Express Analytics CDP Oyster is specifically designed for
marketing professionals who need to manage a lot of data and deploy one
on one personalized experiences. The key is to utilize first-party data in a
way that enables such personalization to enhance the customer experience
through insights.

23. CDPs can collect all of these kinds of data, both online and offline, in order
to deliver this kind of experience.
It can be challenging for some businesses to master all the data they are
given. Often the data is unorganized as a result of a data overload.
Unfortunately, this can lead to a lot of lost business opportunities.
Businesses tend to rely on their CRM systems in the absence of real-time
data processing and combining. But CRMs have limitations.

24. Here are the many capabilities of a customer data
platform:
Collaboration and Decisioning: The ability to work with multiple data
sources and tools.
Visualization: A tool for viewing, visualizing, and aggregating customer
data.
Search and Mapping: The ability to search, navigate and analyze the data
you have.

25. The integration of different types of data through external platforms such as
Salesforce, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics, etc.
Intelligent rules: The use of algorithms to automatically derive additional
value.
Processing: The interpretation of the data you have by automating
processes based on customer engagement.
Data cleansing: Cleaning and deriving extra value from the data that you
have.

26. Easy API integration with other tools and systems to enrich customer
engagement.
Modeling: The ability to derive a statistical model from customer data.
Predictive and Prescriptive analytics: The ability to predict future behavior,
such as churn.
Original source: https://expressanalytics.com/blog/importance-of-a-
customer-data-platform-in-post-3rd-party-cookie-world/

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