The world is making a slow shift from retargeting to pretargeting in marketing. Anyone in the digital marketing industry knows that customer insights are needed to provide a meaningful customer experience. Yet, for years, data collection from online users has meant violation of privacy through invasive 3rd-party cookies, 3rd-party JavaScripts, and tracking pixels - to then being targeted over and over again with the same ads. However, there are much better ways to do customer-centric marketing - more ethically, compliantly (in line with GDPR plus other regional legislation), and respectfully by using 1st-party data. This means Analytics (an alternative to the likes of Google) that only collects 1st-party data through a locally hosted solution - 1st-Party JavaScript Collector.

We need to talk about Retargeting

For decades, the world of online sales and e-commerce has built its platforms based on the biggest potential customer segment. However, that’s not an ideal way to handle the multiple different customer experiences that each customer segment has.

The problem is, in the late stages of the customer journey, competition is high, and shoppers already know what they want. For years marketers have jumped in using Adwords, FB Ads, and when carts are abandoned, Retargeting and abandoned cart tactics. The focus is on product marketing and pushing product sales.

Late customer journey visitors often have low loyalty, are very price-focused, and shop around from order to order. So why base your entire digital marketing strategy on trying to win customers back that you already lost?

Product-based marketing in e-commerce still remains - the majority of online platforms integrate with 3rd-party cookies and external script loading, which in turn bloats your load time and hurts your search engine rankings over time.

Pretargeting in marketing - stages of the customers’ journey

Early Customer Journey

To understand these problems and their solutions better, it’s important to know the stages of the customer journey:

STEP 1: Start of the customer journey; very much unaware and with no intent.
STEP 2: First step into the customer journey; low intent.
STEP 3: Middle of the customer journey; more aware but not sure.
STEP 4: Product-based marketing with high intent, and late customer journey.

The earlier you engage with your potential customers, the higher the potential of conversions, and the earlier you get to acquire loyal customers and ambassadors.

A great way to move potential customers through the 4 stages of the customer journey is often by “education” so that you make the unaware aware.

The Solution: Pretargeting in Marketing

Retargeting works! But not very well compared to what could be done when you work with your potential customers from the first touchpoint, instead of at the last. Pretargeting is the ability to utilize the information you have from your customers to personalize their customer journey. By intentionally mapping the customer journey and matching the customer experiences with the clarification points & the potential customer (type) needs, you can move beyond account-based marketing and the very late customer journey into the first phases by utilization of behavioral data and mapping - and matching it into the different designed User Experiences.

Personalization = Meaningful Customer Experiences

While the marketing of the past heavily relied on a one-size-fits-all approach for all types of customers, the modern marketplace requires a more flexible and targeted approach. Reaching the right customers at the right time is far more effective than taking a mass approach due to evolved individual needs and wants.

There are 5 main types of customers in marketing for which businesses need to tailor attraction and retention techniques. The key is to personalize marketing strategies and target the right audience with the right approach based on the customer experience and behavior of different groups.

• Loyal customers
• Impulse shoppers
• Bargain hunters
• Reluctant customers
• Need-based customers

To gain insights into the customer experience to tailor your targeting approach and touchpoints, you need data about their behavior, sources of traffic, demographics and interests. That’s where first-party data comes in.

Pretargeting in marketing: Only use 1st-party data

Take Advantage of First-party Data

What is first-party data?

• Information collected directly from your audience or customers.
• Data from behaviors, actions or interests demonstrated across your website, app, CRM, subscription data, and social data.
• High value, accurate, relevant, and quality data because it’s collected directly from the source. It’s also available to you at no cost.

Benefits of using first-party data

• Predict future patterns.
• Gain audience insights.
• Personalize content and advertisements.

How to collect first-party data

If you integrate a Digital Experience Platform, such as AesirX, you can gather the data from various sources and store it in one place. You can also pull data from other sources, such as CRM, ERP, Social Media, PIM, etc.

Customers might give you information when they sign up for your email list or buy a product from your website. Once you have all of the information in the system, you can manage, analyze and activate it all together for a holistic customer understanding.

Why is first-party data best for business?

Any company not collecting and activating first-party data from their properties is basically leaving money on the table. Taking control of first-party data should be a priority for any company that wants to monetize, learn from, and use the asset to scale valuable audiences, deepen engagement with consumers and improve ROI.

Pretargeting in marketing: Make it customer centric

How to do Customer Centric Marketing

Visitor Patterns

1. Meta Pattern Insights From Customer Journey Mapping - Look beyond Account Based Marketing (ABM) and optimize the user experience for all visitors.

2. Behavioral Data to Personalize - Analyze the Customer Journey and create Customer Patterns to use as a base for Personalization.

3. Clarify Pain Points - Find crucial pain points in the Customer Journey and personalize them to increase conversions by up to 400%.

4. Convert Visitors to Customers - Meeting each potential customer with a more meaningful experience leads to high conversion rates.

Pretargeting

1. Personalization from First Visit - Each Customer Journey Pattern triggers personalization even from the first visit.

2. Paid Advertising Integration - Integrate to FB Conversion API or other channels to enrich from first visits from paid channels.

3. Visitor Behavioral Data - Monitor behavioral data points and use them for real-time personalization with AesirX CTA Modules.

4. E-commerce Preference Matching - Full e-commerce tracking and preference matching, recommend products or personalize the experience.

5. Dynamic Pricing - Utilize a combination of behavioral, geographic, historical and other data sources to implement dynamic pricing.

New Ways of Retargeting

1. Abandoned Cart - As data is collected first-party, it is still possible to trigger an abandoned cart in a first-party DXP like AesirX.

2. Lead Gen - Trigger real-time lead gen based on company, geographical, behavioral, or purchasing data.

3. Onsite Retargeting - Intelligent retargeting based on behavioral triggers to create a more relevant customer journey.

4. Newsletter Triggers - Trigger newsletters based on a full range of first-party data points.

AesirX

AesirX is building the world’s first fully legal, 1st-party MarTech stack - 20 Solutions in 2 years, and all Open Source!

AesirX Analytics and AesirX BI are 1st-party-based web analytics platforms that collect, store, and analyze business data - only ever in a compliant and privacy-first way. Essentially, they are your 1st-party alternatives to Google Analytics - respectful of your customers’ privacy and fully compliant with GDPR and other regional legislation.

So now everyone has the choice to move away from retargeting and, instead, to pretargeting in marketing.

See the whole picture for the first time; read the full story here:
https://retargeting.aesirx.io/