With the stroke of a pen, your future online marketing just got significantly harder. Thanks to the passage of the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), consumers now have more control than ever before to determine how and where companies can use their personal information. With the first-party data regulation, consumers have the right to ask businesses to:

• Disclose what personal information they have about them (including addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, even purchase, and online search histories)
• Delete their personal information and not sell it to third parties
• Notify them before or at the point when personal information is collected and how explicitly the information will be used.

With the passage of CCPA, brands have consistently struggled to collect important consumer data or leverage the insights that could be gained from third party cookies. Without a more reliable (and compliant) method to learn about your customers, brands are being left in the dark and their marketing campaigns are first on the chopping block.

Marketing optimization becomes impossible. Understanding the customer journey or how your customers shop or interact with your marketing becomes challenging to do. Even studying where your website traffic and sales come from becomes a thing of the not-so-distant past.

But, that’s only true if you continue to rely on third-party cookies.

The solution?

Focus on first-party data collection

Often referred to as first-party cookies, this is user data that can only be collected from the website owner that the consumer visits. In other words, if they land on your website, you are able to track where they came from, what they buy, or otherwise how they interact with your website. To effectively analyze your website traffic, be sure to leverage channel tags, so you can easily identify where you get the most traffic.

When you’re able to implement key tracking metrics on your website to collect this data. Then It is a better position for you to study your customers. With that first-party data, you can then craft marketing campaigns that speak to what your customers are looking for, what they want, and/or their specific shopping preferences/behaviors. Taking this customer-centered approach will not just yield better conversion rates as your marketing will immediately resonate with them. But it will also help you nurture (and understand) the entire customer relationship.

However, the key to effectively execute a first-party data strategy to drive your marketing decisions is to establish clear internal policies. 

 The Procedure how will you collect data? 

The way how will it be stored securely? 

How will personal data collected be used in marketing? 

All of these are important questions and considerations that must be addressed to ensure that you stay compliant with CCPA. Incorporating specific data collection and storage policies is important to also add to your vendor contracts. It is especially if they may come into contact with your customers’ personal data.

Do you have a strategy to navigate CCPA and still build an intimate marketing relationship with your customers?

If not, let’s connect. I’d be happy to share some actionable strategies that you can easily implement and still stay in compliance.

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