Let’s (First-PARTY) Data.
During and post-pandemic, our lives have been disrupted like never before, and the downstream effect of that has caused significant years for digital marketing. An initial Bank of America and Forrester study revealed that e-commerce jumped up to a 33% market share from 16% in 2019. Even now, if you are a brand or retailer, you are still probably suffering from the whiplash this caused on your marketing plans, your retail stores, and even your websites. We were reeling from 10 years of predicted growth in 3 months when that study came out. Had marketers seen this coming, how much would they have invested in their digital presence and infrastructure? During this time, customers have wanted more and more personalisation while simultaneously demanding more and more privacy online.
First-party data is information collected directly from a company’s own customers or users, while third-party data is information collected by other companies. It matters now because privacy concerns and changes to data regulations have made first-party data more valuable and important for businesses as third-party data is increasingly less accessible.
Third-party tracking across devices and domains is being phased out to fit in with new government-led guidelines. More than ever, brands will need to develop better second-party and first-party data strategies and automation to serve their customers. They must meet higher expectations with less accessible data or risk losing out to competitors.
The Paradox
At first look, it does seem like a paradox. How can customers simultaneously be looking for greater personalisation but for companies to also not keep, store, or use any personal data about them?
That’s oversimplifying the issue, and the truth is more nuanced. Some customers will want to be left alone entirely, some want to be messaged only on essential updates, and some customers aren’t too bothered and are happy to be messaged on all things, including general offers. It comes down to their interest in the brand and the nature of the messages. There is also a trust and nurture element to this question: new customers may only want a little touch from your brand, but once they are converted, they may be happier to be more regularly exposed to your messages, especially if they have given permission and know that consent can be quickly rescinded.
This case study featuring Kmart, working with a Customer Data Platform provider, Telium, shows how to approach customers and lead with a best-practice approach.
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Challenge:
Amid evolving data privacy regulations and increasing consumer demand for personalisation, Kmart sought to grant customers complete control over their data with a centralised consent management solution that enables compliant, personalised experience activation across all channels.
Solution:
‘Tealium uniquely enabled Kmart to develop an innovative centralised consent management solution that unifies a customer’s real-time consent status under a single customer profile. Kmart’s centralised consent management solution resolved the issue of data fragmentation to unleash unlimited possibilities in the real-time cross-channel customer experience (CX). With a Tealium-enabled centralised consent management solution, Kmart enlisted Deloitte Digital to provide specialist consulting that accelerated data-driven CX innovation and impact with purpose and precision – combining Tealium’s solutions with Deloitte Digital’s specialist consulting, an innovation powerhouse that accelerated the time to market of Kmart’s bespoke centralised consent management model.
‘Results:
‘Privacy by design unlocked the power of trust to build Kmart’s personalisation engine. As the world’s most trusted CDP, Tealium made data readily accessible and actionable, speeding up operations, saving costs and supporting growth, and making it easier to navigate compliance requirements. The result was an astounding 200% increase in Kmart’s consenting customer base, substantially enhancing audience quality for improved relevance and conversions.
‘Consent management is essential to the organisation of the future. With Tealium, Kmart has consolidated company-wide consent streams to deliver privacy-first customer experiences at every touchpoint. This approach has future-proofed our business to remain compliant in an evolving regulatory landscape.’
Photi Orfanidis – Architect, Marketing & Loyalty Technologies, Kmart Group Australia
‘We live in a world where MarTech capabilities have rapidly grown to enable unlimited possibilities in personalisation. Yet, the only person truly qualified to validate our personalisation efforts is the customer.’
Dr Frederik De Keukelaere – Principal, Deloitte Digital
A first-to-market solution that puts consent at the heart of the customer experience
The volume of data at marketers’ disposal is growing exponentially, and consumers have come to expect a fully personalised experience that recognises them as individuals. In the ‘Internet of Everything’ era, consumers make no distinction between their online and offline lives and do not expect companies to either. In parallel, evolving data privacy regulations, including the Consumer Data Right (CDR), necessitate a privacy-first approach to customer experience.
Kmart used Tealium as the foundation to build a first-to-market centralised consent management solution, positioning itself to adapt to future market challenges and gain a competitive edge. Kmart leveraged Tealium CDP to unify customers’ consent status across all touchpoints, incorporating over 90 business and technical rules and 33 user flows. Consent has become an internal service, democratising data across the organisation and all third-party technologies via a centralised Consent Centre. While the back-end system is complex, the resulting product is simple and easy for staff, vendors, and consumers alike.
Tealium’s Customer Data Hub and IQ Tag Management system enabled an intuitive and responsive customer experience. The solution was built on two components: unauthenticated cookie consent data and authenticated consent data. This increased transparency by allowing Kmart website visitors to manage their cookie data and Kmart account holders to choose whether personally identifiable information is used in a trusted value exchange. Kmart adopted a proprietary four-state logic system to resolve consent, whereby an express ‘yes’ or ‘no’ overwrites inferred or soft values. The system gives customers complete control over how their data is used and the level of real-time personalisation they receive across the retailer’s channels.
Facing the future with transparency and agility
Putting privacy principles first has empowered Kmart to provide its customers with the desired experiences. With Tealium as the foundation of its technology stack, the retailer is future-ready and agile. Centralising customer consent from multiple sources has helped Kmart to establish a unified view of its first-, second-, and third-party data streams from multichannel activations. Kmart is now more transparent with its customers regarding how it tracks their data while restoring full control of that data to customers. As compliance and customer requirements become more complex, Kmart’s future-ready centralised consent management solution extends beyond simply checking a box: it is what will drive competitive advantage in the privacy-first global data economy.
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What I particularly like about this case study is, they start at the beginning. The first personalisation strategy any marketer should attempt is how to ensure customers can easily signal how, when, and what they want to be stored and used and ultimately, as Frederik De Keukelaere writes, ‘the only person truly qualified to validate our personalisation efforts is the customer.’
Navigating the new world of digital marketing can be a daunting task, especially when it comes to explaining the value of services and making them relatable to all. A key challenge in selling SEO, for instance, is conveying its value and significance when executed correctly. The solution to this is to move beyond fancy titles and technical jargon and ground digital marketing in the real world. One effective way to achieve this is through the use of familiar examples and frameworks.
Contemporary digital marketing emphasises the importance of creating a human conversation on a larger scale. The goal is to replicate the natural customer experience of one human conversing with another individual, with the objective of building connections that ultimately result in sales. To achieve this, we must prioritise collecting first-party data.
While digital marketing has evolved tremendously over the years, the range of responsibilities that marketers must undertake continues to expand. As we advance through the Analytics Maturity Curve, the skills required to succeed in digital marketing continue to grow.
Despite the challenges, there are ample opportunities for those who are willing to adapt. One effective strategy to make digital marketing more accessible is to keep things simple by utilising familiar examples and frameworks and specialising where possible. It is crucial to remain open to learning and adapting as the industry continues to change, but it’s clear that true growth lies in unlocking permission-based one-on-one conversations at scale – The Power of One.
You should now have a more comprehensive understanding of some of the challenges we overworked and overburdened digital marketers experience, but also the tantalising opportunities available to any marketer or company that can effectively and ethically balance privacy and personalisation with the right value exchange and systems in place.
Next, as the Cookie Apocalypse looms, reshaping digital advertising, marketers must adapt to the demise of third-party cookies, embracing privacy-conscious strategies for personalised experiences. Brace for the future as we confront the cookie apocalypse head-on.
