"Every visitor without a known email will now see this offer on your website."Īs retailers unwrap more of those first-party presents, they are investing in tech to store it, unify it and put it to use. "Let's start converting anonymous website visitors into email subscribers," states an automated voice in a Lytics video. Lytics, like other customer data platforms, lets companies show discount offers selectively, only to people whose email addresses they don't already have in their database. Until recently, marketers "have pushed down in their priority because of the availability of third-party data," said Tom Strachan, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Lytics, which offers a platform for managing customer data that is integrated with Facebook, Shopify, Salesforce, Mailchimp and other systems. Because it had been so plentiful and accessible, he said, "third-party data over the years, on one level, has been an equalizer," including for smaller online sellers competing with larger retailers. "Third-party data is a bit of a duct tape where everybody can stitch data industrywide," said Michael Neveu, director of data for North America at digital ad consultancy Media.Monks. The Apple and Google changes, along with European and state privacy laws giving people more control over how data is collected and used, are now blocking access to the third-party cookies and other trackers companies relied on for the past two decades. In the past, those third-party data signals could be more easily detected and passed around by Facebook and other middlemen to make connections necessary to aim ads to specific people in the market for products and know if they visited a site or bought something as a result. Now, an influx of site visitors during the holiday shopping season gives them even more incentive to offer discounts to grab email data. Retailers and other firms were prompted to scramble for more first-party data to counteract the loss of third-party data signals after Google began its slow burn toward killing off third-party cookies in its Chrome web browser in 2020, and later when Apple implemented new privacy options for iPhone users this year.
It encompasses contact information like physical addresses and cellphone numbers, website interaction data, information stored in point-of-sale systems showing online and in-store purchases and even voice data from call centers.Īn email address is valuable because it allows retailers to tie the information they know about people to data in other systems used to target advertising and measure its effectiveness, across email marketing, loyalty programs and more. First-party data includes much more than emails, though. "It's like entry-level first-party data collection or like lowest common denominator first-party data collection," she said.Įxchanging discounts for emails helps retailers collect an important piece of first-party data, a category of information they attain through direct interactions with consumers. The immediate-discount-for-data trend is not the most sophisticated marketing tactic, said Lizzy Foo Kune, vice president and analyst at research firm Gartner. Sure, these discounts and deals help retailers attract bargain hunters, but there's another big reason so many ecommerce sites are gunning for email addresses: the pressing need to build their first-party data troves. , which sells gift boxes, immediately gave $10 off when people supplied their email address. Holiday shoppers are up against rising prices amid supply chain clogs, but even before Black Friday sales started, all sorts of online retailers were putting up virtual discount signs as soon as shoppers arrived at their websites.Ī pop-up message greeted visitors right away with a 50% off discount if they signed up to receive emails from the apparel seller.