AB Tasty Partner guest post from
Sarah Davis
Content Marketing Specialist at ROI Revolution
Noel Liotta
Business Development Manager at ROI Revolution
As digital practices have evolved, the ability to personalize and target messaging to the individual consumer has become increasingly accurate and powerful.
If a brand can understand their audience and deliver the right message through the right channel at the right time, they can introduce their products to exactly the person who is intended to use them without cluttering the screens of users who will never be relevant (hence why the algorithms know to venture away from my screens with their sports balls and hockey merch).
But this advertising strategy has a dark side effect: The increased ability to personalize could provide for personal data compromise. Constant updates to privacy regulations has led to many advertisers taking two steps forward and one step back in the granularity of their marketing campaigns over the last few years.
Obstacles Increasing for Ecommerce Brands: New Privacy Initiatives Complicate Tracking
The latest privacy initiative from Apple calls on users to provide explicit permission for apps to collect and share data by enforcing a Tracking Transparency Prompt (ATT) in the App Store. Apps that do not adopt the prompt will be blocked from the App Store. Long-term impacts will include reduced tracking capabilities and reduced personalization opportunities for users.
It is expected that this major privacy initiative means that the percentage of iPhone users sharing their unique Identifier for Advertisers with apps will drop from 70% to as low as 10%.
Right now, the core area of the customer journey that will be affected is at the top of the funnel. The limitations that will be put in place most aggressively affect our ability to retarget consumers and to receive data back about demographic targeting. There is still a lot of uncertainty around the impact that it will drive.
Apple isn’t the only company taking steps to give users more control over how their data is used, Google announced earlier this month that they will not be exploring a third-party cookie alternative with the depreciation of the cookie next year. Third-party cookies will be phased in 2022. Instead, interest-based advertising cohorts and privacy-preserving APIs will “Prevent individual tracking while still delivering results for advertisers”.
With consumers’ paths to brands becoming more restricted, it’s more important than ever to deliver a great experience to users on your site. At ROI, we often use the adage that a rising tide lifts all boats when it comes to implementing a conversion optimization strategy for websites.A site that converts well will not only make each dollar you spend on advertising more effective but also help your brand turn visitors into brand fans so you can earn more first-party data.
On April 21st at 2pm, join conversion experts from AB Tasty and ROI Revolution as they unravel the complexities of elevating your customer experience through conversion rate optimization. In this live webinar, you’ll uncover:
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- Key personalization tactics to help you stay ahead of changing consumer behaviors.
- How to structure your optimization strategy to fuel brand growth.
- 3 ways to improve the user experience on your website.
Optimizing your website for conversions takes time, effort, and the right strategic partners. Register today for this webinar to kickstart your optimization journey.
2 Strategies for Testing Personalization
The brands that will thrive in data privacy compliance will be the brands that are able to earn trust and deliver great customer experiences – a process that can only be accomplished through an intentional customer experience strategy.
Because site personalization relies on first-party cookies to understand who is viewing the webpage, AB Tasty is currently already in compliance with the new regulations and protected from the hurdles that advertisers face. As a shopper, my path to purchase becomes easier when that ad takes me to a new site and I’m able to easily find what I’m looking for. Conversion optimization has never been a more important part of your advertising strategy than today. Thankfully, there are a number of ways to introduce a spirit of testing and personalization into your customer acquisition strategy.
Strategy 1: Add a prominent “Email Cart” feature for high consideration purchases. This will help you earn that email address for multi-channel marketing. When we tried this with one of our clients at ROI, we saw a 19.2% lift in conversion rate at a 93.8% confidence level.
Strategy 2: Try a featured testimonial on your mobile cart. Adding a future customer for marketing purposes is a great way to improve conversions someday, but improving conversions is a great way to improve revenue from your advertising today. By improving customer confidence with a strong testimonial at the cart layout, ROI increased one brand’s conversion rates by 6.43% at a 96.5% confidence level.
While advertisers still have opportunities to be relevant and respect user privacy restrictions, it is expected that changes will continue to roll out with relatively no end in sight. But who ever got into the ecommerce business because they didn’t like change?
