The Urgency to Establish Meaningful Direct to Consumer Engagement Channels!
Brands struggle to gain direct access to customer data due to low levels of trust, loyalty, and privacy concerns. This is an issue today and it is only getting worse.
Imagine if you are a snack brand that sells through distributors or direct to supermarkets. Your ability to personalize your brand’s products and services to a particular group of people starts with third-party data and impression spend. If you have a loyalty program, that is another great mechanism for deeper “Zero-Party” data voluntarily given by the end customer.
The marketing industry is facing a few headwinds in the near term. First, the tighter privacy regulatory environment in many prominent economies worldwide is forcing brands to provide more customer #control regarding their data. Second, Apple and Google are both quickly moving technically towards the “Cookie Apocalypse” as pressing links on your phone will NOT generate cookies like it used to, coupled with the fact that most Apple users have already blocked app tracking. In my opinion, the whole shady market related to third-party data brokerage business is heading towards a cliff.
What are brands to do when they are constantly being disintermediated?
Brands should invest in a direct-to-consumer approach that is hyper-personalized. I always like to start with a simple, relatable example. If I know someone at XYZ address likes Domino’s pizza because I bought their information from a data broker, I now have third-party data. If I am a brand and I have your name, address, age, etc., (PII), I now have first-party data. If the brand asks you nicely and you volunteer information that you are gluten intolerant, then it has your Zero-Party data that, per customer, is more valuable than any other level of data and creates a relationship with the customer directly.
Now that a direct-to-consumer channel has been created, you could really change the customer experience (CX) of your brand offering. Another example from a financial use case is how banks have mastered CX and managed to make their applications an integral part of our daily lives, even if it is for a fraction of a minute each day.
The banks have designed their apps as a transactional model where you open the app, pay a bill or move money around, and off you go. To personalize your experience across the services they wish to offer, the bank needs to change the CX dramatically to require serious interaction over a longer period. Enter One Creation’s platform for the solution: The bank partners with an online parking spot provider and One Creation offers a Zero-Party campaign that asks bank users to opt into a service that will offer at least one free parking spot per month as soon as it sees that the user is driving to a location with potential parking. This value offered to customers will cause the bank’s app to be accessed with a different premise, a “destination app”!
Apple’s and Google’s actions and announcements around privacy are all going in one direction and creating even more monopolies on customer insights, and brands, banks, and card processors are all going to be disintermediated from the consumer. It is like a meteor coming for the Brands and financial institutions and it is coming soon to iOS 17.
Dwindling third-party data, lack of trust in companies that acquire data through third parties, and the complete customer interaction taken over by the manufacturer’s device operating systems might destroy a brand. A new DTC channel must be created and be based on #Trust, customer choice, and control. Learn more about One Creation at www.one-creation.com.