First-Party Data – 4 Strategies for Converting Unknown to Known
First-party data grows increasingly crucial as we consider the addition of new privacy laws and the disappearance of the third-party cookie. One thing remains consistent: the relationship with your audience. Your audience is consuming your content and coming back for more. INMA (International News Media Association) just held a webinar and posted a relevant blog on why it is critical to create a first-party data strategy as the cookie environment dissipates. Now is the time to strategically incorporate campaigns for converting more unknown to known in order to own more first-party data and drive revenue. Below are four ways that you can convert unknown to known:
1. Personalization Pop-up Modal and/or Progressive Profiling Campaign via Your Website.
Learn more about the anonymous visitors on your website by establishing personalization modals that gradually request more information each time the visitor returns to your site. Insert a simple form requiring one piece of information in order for your audience to subscribe, register for a newsletter or content, etc. Targeting the anonymous website visitors is a strong way to attain their email address. After this is achieved, you can then request more information over time through additional progressive profiling modals. Another option is to place them through an automated welcome series with progressive profiling modals in an Odyssey voyage (utilizing Omeda’s marketing automation).
Implementing a progressive profiling campaign is a strong way to start because it doesn’t require too much information from your audience at once. Below is an example of a progressive profiling campaign set up via a modal.
Once the audience fills out the first piece or two of the form/question field and are known, they still aren’t known to the extent you might need in order to accurately target and understand them. From this point out, you can request other pieces of information in order to build up their profile and accurately engage them. To read more in depth on how to set it up, review the following write up on converting unknown to known. Please also review the webinar, led by our client success directors from over the summer on this topic.
2. An Omeda Form (or outside form with appropriate API’s) to Gate Access to Premium Content or request someone Subscribe/Sign Up
Consider placing forms in appropriate places for two different purposes. 1. Gate premium content, virtual events, white papers, webinars, etc. and 2. Request the audience sign up for renewals, etc. When Omeda hosts the form, the encrypted customer ID is passed back as part of the redirect to the brand site. If the form is hosted externally, then the party that hosts the login form can use it in combination with Omeda API’s. The external form would have to be referenced to lookup a customer, retrieve the encrypted customer ID and call Omeda’s olytics.confirm() method to convert the unknown visitor to known.
The last important piece of information for this category is to get creative. It’s important to gate, but even more effective to look at your customer data and determine which pieces of content were most impactful and use that analysis to inform decisions on what to create and gate for more conversions. Review our webinar or the info sheet on creating a lead gen form.
3. Email & Marketing Automation Campaigns
Did you know that when you include links in an email, Omeda scans the links and appends the encrypted customer ID to any links with a domain that has Omeda’s web tracking script? Therefore, when a customer begins to click on the links, their encrypted customer ID (known customer) is tied with the unknown customer (anonymous ID) from the browser. This conversion process is built into Omeda’s JavaScript that resides on the brand site. It will fire automatically when the encrypted customer ID is present in the URL. You can create deployments that appeal to your audience and begin to convert unknown to known.
4. Content Metering
You can gate exclusive content (similarly to suggestion number two) related to sections of your website or a virtual event. Event meters can dynamically target based on the audience attendee or individual. For example, you can create something in the form of “exclusive content” pop up modal that will require the individual to enter their information for more of the exclusive content. Have you been offering something for free for a while that your audience might consider paying for? Do you want to consider allowing the unknown audience member a few articles for free and then establishing a meter?
You can also consider progressive registration which requires your audience to progressively enter more information for more premium content. For example, entering some basic demographic information can get an audience member free content. However, if this audience member wants additional premium content, they may be required to enter more information and eventually pay for a subscription. Grow your audience as they get more familiar and engaged with your brand.
The signup forms that are hosted by Omeda have the ability to immediately pass information to/from your database, marking customers as ‘known’ and allowing them to pass through the meter. It also allows for explicit conversion tracking via the promo code feature. Learn more about metering via our knowledge base article or through our webinar on metering.