Effective Email Marketing: how to collect AND benefit from 1st Party Data

Email marketing is the use of email as a channel to promote, educate, drive sales and conversions - whilst also aiming to develop a more personalised relationship with customers you are communicating with. Having access to an individual’s email address is the result of direct engagement (and permission) from a prospect or customer, and it is generally the most easily gathered type of 1st party data. 

As marketers begin to navigate the approaching deprecation of cookies and are no longer able to rely on 3rd party data, it is becoming clear that a focus on email marketing will be key to building their 1st party data strategy, and one of their most valuable assets.

Email Marketing + 1st Party Data = win-win

Whilst email marketing is the most common form of obtaining 1st party data, by leveraging this and subsequent data you can then also drive more effective email marketing campaigns… but how does this loop work?

1. In the first instance, an email address is obtained from a site user or other data collection/lead generation point (it’s important to remember, that whilst marketers have to switch to a 1st party data strategy to meet the changing landscape, people will only share their data if they believe it is of value for them to do so).
2. Companies can then use email to collect additional 1st party data from leads and customers 
3. This information can then be used to segment into audiences based on similar characteristics, preferences, and/or needs
4. Marketing teams are then able to develop personalised emails to talk to those audience segments about their specific interests, solve a problem, etc.
5. Rinse and repeat - by testing and measuring the effectiveness of messages, future emails can be further tailored (whilst also collecting more 1st party data along the way), thereby increasing the likelihood of conversion and ROI.

The CRM and CDP Relationship - from email to ads

The collection of 1st party data in the form of email goes well beyond its use in direct marketing. The next step is utilising this unique customer information in advertising campaigns and retargeting. 

In some cases, an organisation will already be using their email marketing platform (HubSpot, Mailchimp, Pardot, etc.) as a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool and source of truth about its audience(s). In addition to a CRM, Customer Data Platforms (CDP) such as Wondaris, are increasingly being adopted to help create a single unified view of users in the new 1st party data landscape. CDPs integrate with an organisation’s CRM to better understand customer touchpoints and preferences pre-, during and post-purchase, and can also leverage data for Google Ads campaigns for more targeted and effective advertising.

In a real life application, an organisation might be sending out a monthly email newsletter to its subscribers. They might then also want to roll out and test tailored Google Ads. The marketing team can use the email addresses with Google’s Customer Match (a targeting tool that helps advertisers and marketers to utilise their own 1st party data) - to target and retarget known audiences across search, display, video, shopping and Gmail campaigns. 

Google uses the 1st party data provided with their own user profile information to develop a Customer Match Audience; from there marketers can create campaigns and ads targeting that audience (and future segments). To make things even easier and more efficient, the Wondaris CDP is one of a group of 3rd party integrators approved by Google to upload Customer Match Segments within the Google Ads platform. The Customer Matching Upload partnership allows clients to upload high-value audiences securely through simple and clickable workflows. 

With its ability to collect data directly from consumers, email marketing provides the ideal platform to replace the current reliance on 3rd party data and cookies. Email will most likely become the unique identifier for users, and its application has reach beyond sending out the odd newsletter - instead allowing for tailored and targeted campaigns across multiple channels and touchpoints, and a better view of customers than previously able.

The Wondaris cloud platform allows you to link all of your business and marketing data sources so you can better understand what’s driving people to your brand and how you can ensure they stay loyal to you long-term. Connect with the Wondaris team today.

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