Thinking About a Post-Cookie World

What can email do for you that cookies can’t?

You probably know that cookies are on their way out. A variety of things are all pushing their demise: Legislation (GDPR, California’s Consumer Privacy Act),  platforms (Apple’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention), and browsers (Firefox blocks third-party cookies and Chrome will soon let users block them).

Because most adtech and martech platforms are heavily cookie-reliant, you probably also know you need to adapt your strategy. Which is okay, because cookies don’t work cross-device and we live in a mobile-first world.

Instead, email is becoming the most reliable method of cross-device identification. Most people have a couple of email addresses, but rarely change them, so those addresses become a long-term, reliable identity attribute. This means you have the ability to Enrich an email address and use the information for consistently reaching and understanding more about your customers. 

You can activate these hashed emails on platforms such as Google Ads and Facebook, DMPs such as Oracle Data Cloud, and directly to Trade Desk or any other DSP.

You can start with the email address, but you can do so much more with FullContact: 

• You can use Identity Resolution to gather additional information about the customer to get a full online and offline picture including things like demographics, lifestyle, purchases, and affinities. 
• You can use Resolve to bring together your email lists, your names and mailing addresses, phone numbers, social handles, Mobile Ad Identifiers and more to have a single view of information and append third-party data. 
• You have all the information you need about a customer to activate, bridge the gap between online and offline marketing, improve customer service, and create an omnichannel experience.  

A universal, central ID makes it possible for you to follow customers as they hop from channel to channel. And the email address is the starting point.

Audience Activation for Omnichannel Campaigns

• Using first-party data assets for audience creation gives a client the ability to control their media targeting, reach and frequency.
• Segments can be created by FullContact and pushed to onboarders, directly to media platforms, or to the printer for direct mail execution. 

How to Enable on DMPs, DSPs, Social Platforms, and More

The process is unique per platform, but it’s a simple process in most cases: 

1. Upload your custom audience consisting of hashed emails and external identifiers to the platform 
2. Create, update or remove your audience members based on opt-outs or low performance to optimize your CAC.
3. When your custom audience has signed in to their platform account, they’ll begin to see your ads on selected ad space within the platform.

And here’s where to find the implementation instructions on these platforms:

Facebook
Google
Instagram
Twitter
Oracle Data Cloud
Amazon Advertising