It’s time to break connectivity barriers & join the dots of customer data

A star is a single point of light in the sky, but draw lines between them and a picture begins to form. By drawing constellations, people turned data points randomly scattered in the dark into characters and stories rich with cultural value. Marketers need to do the same with their customer data. For years, they’ve been focused on getting a clearer picture of each individual star, but the true value of customer data is found when you link them all together.

Of course, connecting customer data is much more difficult than drawing lines in the sky. Out of date technology, data fragmentation, and signal fidelity loss often slow or prevent progress towards a complete view of current and potential customers. 

Brands need a new data strategy, one that unifies the data they have and expands it to the data they don’t. Let’s look at the barriers to internal and external connectivity and how technology and a change in thinking can overcome them.
 

Balancing retention & acquisition to empower both

Everyone in marketing and advertising either works on retaining existing customers or acquiring new ones. The gold rush for first-party data has kept the retention pillar strong but privacy regulations, third-party cookie deprecation, and walled garden dominance have created cracks in acquisition that have been difficult to fill. If we allow one half of the industry’s fundamentals to go neglected, even the most data-rich brands will be stuck retargeting the same customers again and again.

To break out of this cycle, marketers need to connect their customer data platforms (CDPs) - and all the first-party data and customer insights they contain - to the wider ad tech and madtech ecosystem, such as third-party IDs, data marketplaces, MAIDs, CTV platforms, clean rooms, and wherever else valuable insights and activation can be found. By algorithmically identifying patterns in these fragmented sources, we can create a holistic view of current customers and their wider movements, which can then inform strategy on where to find prospects and what to say to them.

Internal data fragmentation is as much an issue as external. Though the retention focus of recent years has put the limelight on gathering first-party data, this data often ends up siloed across different departments or even different teams within a single organisation, either as a result of rushed digitisation or the tech debt of laying new processes over old. It’s a serious problem: 55% of CMOs don’t have systems connecting their data siloes and 89% lack direct access to customer data.

Unified first-party data is incredibly powerful, but like the engine of a car, it can’t get you where you need to be on its own. It needs to be surrounded by a chassis of second and third-party data and a suite of ever-evolving technology to create a fully functional, high-speed marketing machine that delivers both retention and acquisition.
 

Tracking consent throughout the framework

Interconnectivity and interoperability can empower marketing strategy and campaigns, but in today’s increasingly regulated, privacy-focused ecosystem, customer data cannot be passed around recklessly. Consent must be explicitly requested from the customer so that the collected consent signal can be passed along with their data wherever it goes, with the option to opt-out at any time.

Data from consenting customers can then be used as representative samples that can be extrapolated to accurately profile unknown customers, while companies without access to first-party data can seek new audiences by connecting to second and third-party data sources that are also derived from consenting samples. It isn’t necessary to know everything about every customer, just enough about those who consent - effectively filling the gap left by third-party cookies without contravening privacy law.

We have reached the point where technological progress in cookieless, consent-based targeting and attribution solutions has seen them surpass their cookie-based predecessors in speed and scale. It’s time for the 81% of companies that are still reliant on third-party cookies to make the switch.
 

Resisting centralisation & supporting the open web

More than a third (36%) of marketers are concerned about their reliance on walled gardens, yet many data strategies deployed by brands have seen them build walled gardens of their own. After years of being told that first-party data is one of their most valuable assets (which is certainly true), many have begun to guard their hoard too jealously, undermining its true potential. But these walls only hold the business back, not the customer. 

Customers will hop freely from a news website to an app to a social network to an online retailer to a streaming platform, often multi-tasking as they go. There is tremendous value in understanding these movements, but they remain invisible if each destination acts as if it exists in isolation. Businesses in the connected world are not distant islands, they are neighbouring and overlapping communities that have much to gain by working together in privacy-safe ways. 

Everyone with a stake in a diverse and productive open web should leave building walls to tech giants and pursue collaborative approaches that maximise data value while protecting and respecting the consumer’s right to privacy. We are at an intersection of technology, connectivity, and identity that can reverse the trend away from the dead ends of consolidation and centralisation towards the boundless innovation created from competition and cooperation. We’ve been talking about the power of interoperability for years, now it’s time to work together and deliver the proof.