Apple’s announcement last month made quite a ripple in the world of CRM Marketing. In case you missed it one of the many updates coming is the ability for iOS15 users to turn off IP address tracking and the ability for senders to know if an email has been opened in Apple Mail.
It is yet another sign that the pressure towards more respect for consumer privacy will continue to increase and will not be something that is “optional” for marketers to consider.
And, while we understand that the increased privacy options might be a headache when it comes to marketing strategy, we actually think it’s an opportunity for CRM marketers to take a step back, rethink their practices, and embrace the consumer’s desire for more privacy.
Reason 1: It’s the customer-centric thing to do.
Consumers are showing us that increased privacy is what they want. If we really care about the customer, we will adapt to deliver messages accordingly.
Reason 2: It will lead to more meaningful customer communications.
Increased privacy does not mean marketers cannot deliver valuable customer experiences. Marketers still have many ways to take the data they have available and use it to communicate with customers in meaningful and impactful ways.
Many would argue that retargeting ads aren’t valuable customer experiences, they are just plain creepy. Customers want brands to engage with them directly with relevant content, not spy on them from one channel to the next showing them their best sellers or the same products they already browsed or bought online.
Use this as an opportunity to re-engage with your customer in ways that leverage the information they willingly hand over to you and information that shows their intent to purchase. You can also consider incentivizing customers to share more information with you and then use this to deliver meaningful experiences.
Reason 3: It’s the push we needed to focus on the metrics that matter.
It’s time to move away from the vanity metrics and start tracking the business metrics that can be directly tied back to your business goals. Opens and clicks are great, but if at the end of the day you don’t have conversions, will you be satisfied with your results? Increased privacy means we will have fewer and fewer of the vanity metrics available to us. Is that really such a bad thing if the ultimate goal of your business is to find customers who want to purchase what you are selling? Start making business decisions based on actionable metrics like conversions.
Reason 4: It’s the perfect opportunity to ditch rule-based segmentation and adopt advanced targeting methods.
Increased privacy means that rule-based segmentation will become less reliable. “Target 90-days openers” will lose some of its meaning. Is this a real problem? We don’t think so! It’s an opportunity to move away from rule-based segmentation to deliver more targeted and relevant messages.
At Tinyclues, we’ve always thought rule-based segmentation was sub-optimal. It’s biased, arbitrary, and isn’t moving you closer to being customer-centric.
For example: just because I opened 3 emails last week does not mean I want to receive 3 emails every week. And, alternatively, just because I didn’t open any of the emails sent last week (none of them were relevant to me!), doesn’t mean I don’t want to receive emails that are relevant to me in the future.
Or, another example, if you are only selecting customers who opened or clicked – even if you have a great open or click rate – your active segment will gradually decrease over time. The only way to maintain the size of your engaged segments is through acquisition. But, this doesn’t address the “retention” of CRM: how do you re-engage customers who haven’t clicked or opened? Hint: completely ignoring them doesn’t work in this case!
And, if we may make one more comment on this point: there are incredible tools available, like Tinyclues, which can help you harness the power of all of your customer data (not just the explicit signals) to deliver more relevant messages and foster a much stronger customer experience.
Reason 5: We’re marketers. Embracing change is in our DNA.
You are a MARKETER! Your job is to make sure future customers and current customers know about your incredible products and can’t live without your services. The way you do that changes ALL the time, so if you haven’t already… embrace change and start adapting.
Don’t let the fear of change paralyze you.
💡Interested in this topic? Read this article: 4 Strategic Actions to Take Between Now and the Next iOS 15 Update
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