How to Build Customer Trust with Privacy-First Marketing

Privacy-first marketing has emerged as an approach in which corporations focus on ensuring customers’ data protection and aiming to communicate with them properly.

Beyond conversion data, third-party data, such as insights from browsing information via third-party cookies and other sources, have long been central to marketing. However, with increasing consumer concerns about data sharing and stricter privacy laws, relying on third-party data is becoming less viable. Now is an opportune time for businesses to shift towards transparent, consented first-party data.

The good news is that moving away from third-party data can bring clear marketing advantages. For instance, one company reduced acquisition costs by 27%. This approach also helps brands build greater trust and control with their consumers.

What is Privacy-First Marketing?

Privacy-first marketing has emerged as an approach in which corporations focus on ensuring customers’ data protection and aiming to communicate with them properly. An example of this would be, let’s say you own a local business and wants to send emails about your latest products. 

Privacy-first marketing means rather than spamming everyone with generic messages in their inbox, sending everyone a form asking them for what flavors or types of pastries that they like, so then you can send specialized content to people who would appreciate it.

This preserves privacy by only utilizing the information a customer actively shares and helps to improve their experience with personal messages they want. Privacy-first marketing ultimately offers a superior adoption of privacy preferences. This allows more sustainable customer trust and loyalty.

Strict regulations like GDPR and CCPA strive to define more stringent guidelines on how data is handled. Similarly, the CCPA provides additional controls for California residents over data sharing and deletion. This happens to coincide perfectly with the increasing importance of data protection and privacy laws, which is why businesses must comply by disclosing info in a clear way that customers understand when they are giving their information away. By doing so, you not only ensure legal compliance but also build the trust of your customers and respect their needs.

Practical Examples of Privacy-First Marketing

• Loyalty Programs: Entice customers with exclusive deals/discounts for signing up to your loyalty programs.
• Gated Content: Offer downloadable assets, such as eBooks, in return for a user subscription to grow your first-party data list.
• Targeted Email Marketing: Compliance-based data allows you to design targeted email marketing campaigns based on content and offers that are tailored specifically for the recipient, making them more personal.

Explicit consent for data collection and use is fundamental to privacy-first marketing, providing consumers with control over their data. To make consent meaningful, consumers should receive clear and accessible information about what they’re agreeing to.

Cookies and Privacy-First Marketing

Cookies are the one technology that marketers should fully understand before shifting toward a privacy-first approach. Cookies are small text files that a website saves on a visitor’s browser when they visit it, or sometimes via an affiliated third party (though third-party cookies are likely to be phased out soon). 

Analytical cookies, managed by either the site owner or third parties, help analyze visitor behavior by examining stored data, such as the areas visited on the site or previously clicked components, allowing websites to offer customized experiences based on this information.

This data might include the last website a visitor accessed. Even if they are new or returning, which pages they visited within the domain, and actions like button clicks, everything counts. Marketers use cookies to retarget past visitors, assess ad campaign performance, and understand how website changes impact user behavior. In essence, cookies are a key source of data for digital marketing efforts.

As cookies inherently store and present user data, implementing them directly involves data collection. However, different types of cookies affect privacy differently, and marketers can responsibly collect this data by adhering to ethical and compliant practices.

First- and Third-party cookies enabled marketers to understand customer behavior, helping optimize budgets and improve ROI. However, these tracking practices often place consumer privacy second, which goes against a privacy-first approach.

Consumer-First Privacy

As data privacy becomes more important, companies will need to evolve their marketing strategies. They have to become more GDPR-compliant in data handling. With third-party cookies gone, they will increasingly rely on first-party and consumer research data to deliver personalized outreach. This shift could increase marketing and sales costs by 10-20% or require adjustments to maintain current returns.

The new model emphasizes a meaningful exchange, where companies offer value in return for more accurate customer data, fostering genuine relationships with consumers who have a greater affinity for the brand. Marketing funnels may be narrower, but they will capture more engaged and loyal consumers.

Key Actions for Privacy-First Marketing 

A privacy-first marketing lens will require a shift in mindset and mode. Practical strategies include:

• Transparency and Consent: Clearly state in your privacy policy how you collect, share, and retain customer data. Break that natural aura with explicit permission before data is collected and provide direct ways to opt out.
• Give Prominence to First-Party Data: Begin by establishing a sturdy base of first-party data the kind customers share intentionally, for instance, email addresses and site engagements. Leverage this information to create a more personalized experience for customers through targeted campaigns.
• Use Contextual Advertising: Ad models that do not require linking individual users. A common example is contextual advertising, which focuses on the content of a page.
• Improve Data Security: Use trustworthy data security measures to secure customer data and comply with regulatory requirements while protecting the privacy of users. These include encryption, routine security audits, and training employees in data security. You may also consider implementing privacy-supportive technology like AI for privacy-safe analysis and media mix modeling (MMM) to target customers.

Conclusion:

Building customer trust with a privacy-first marketing environment is an endeavor for the long haul. Think marathon, not sprint. Not every marketer will require a universal solution that meets their specific needs; for instance, some marketers may track both media placements to audience targeting and conversion tracking.