In the past ten years, the use of cookies increased dramatically for personalized marketing and digital marketing. According to a 2021 US survey, 51% of the digital advertisers claimed that third-party cookies generated the majority of data used by the company and hence, were an essential part of the marketing strategy. Only 10% stated that cookies were not very important for their marketing strategy.However, multiple browsers (Chrome, Safari, Firefox, etc.) have announced that these third-party cookies won't be there for much longer. And this announcement has left marketers to scramble for alternative strategies to gather customer data.Over the next twelve months, it will become increasingly challenging for marketers to target ads, measure their performance, and even cross-channel attributions. It's not the end of the world, though. There are still some ways that can help you prepare for the end of third-party cookies. Let's explore.

How to Collect Data to Navigate Cookieless Ecommerce

If Shopify store owners do not create a robust plan to tackle advertisements without cookies, they will encounter a growing number of challenges in the future. Below are a few ideas that you can start using right away.

Bring Back Pop-Ups

When third-party cookies are no longer there, how you collect zero and first-party data will become the crux of your digital marketing strategy. You can start with pop-ups.Pop-ups, when designed beautifully, can help you gather preferential data from the customer from anywhere on the site. You can pre-determine which page of your shopping page displays what. For example, if your customers are on the product page, you can ask them about their preferred size, design, material, etc. However, if they are on the home page, you can use pop-ups to collect their contact information such as email, social media handles, contact number, etc.In the pop-ups you show to your customers, you can ask questions to narrow down the suitable products for them. And also, add a field for email and a check-box that takes their consent for marketing content.For instance, let's consider you are a jewelry brand. On the basis of the results you have collected via pop-ups, you can send the jewelry recommendation of the right types, materials, shapes, and styles. The more relevant content your visitors receive from you, the more likely they are to purchase from you.

Bashert Jewelry uses pop-ups in a very interesting way. Their 'drop a hint' pop-up allows them to gather five essential pieces of information – the name of the visitor, their email address, product preference and size, their friend's name, and their friend's email address. Basically, they get two leads and some valuable information just by showing one pop-up.

Enable a Customer Account Page

In a cookieless world, you will want some sort of identity for your customers to keep your online campaign running effectively. And this is exactly what you get from customers when you ask them to register on your Shopify store.When you have a customer account page, you know precisely who's browsing through your product listings, what products they are looking for, which product catches their attention, the products they like, etc.

You can lure your customers into opening an account by giving them discounts and offers, like how Pura Vida Bracelets does. They ask for basic information and promise one shore dollar to their customers for every $1 spent by them. You can even ask for additional information like their birthday or favorite color. This will help you give them discounts on the occasion and send them relevant product recommendations.According to a report, it costs five to eight times more to acquire new customers than to retain them. Setting up a customer account page ensures that your acquired customers have a good shopping experience which will bring them again to your store.Customer accounts improve the shopping experience by allowing customers to:

• Keep their order history in check
• Purchase a previously bought item
• Seamlessly initiate the return request
• Add items to wishlist/purchase-later
• Track the recently viewed items
• Maintain address book

A customer account brings a lot of valuable data about your target customers. For example, you can track their recently purchased items and their order history to send them more personalized and relevant suggestions.

Run an Opt-in Only Contest

Contests are a great way to bring new visitors to your funnel and then, with consistent communication, convert those visitors into your customers. You have to promise genuine incentives and prizes to lure your customers into participating in the contest. To collect data from them, you can run opt-in contests where they have to enter their contact details and email to participate.By setting up a customer detail form, you can collect audience demographics such as age, gender, location, income, etc. For example, in the contest participation form, you can ask the participant to enter the ZIP code to check if the gift can be delivered to their location. This can create a map of where most of your customers come from. In addition to this data, the gender, age, and even the income of your participants can be very crucial for ad targeting.

Collect Customer Data Every Chance You Get

If we look at it, cookies are nothing but pieces of code that constantly track users across gazillions of websites to collect relevant data for a personalized browsing experience. When cookies are not there in 2023, you'll still need a lot of data and insights to give customers the shopping experience they deserve. And relying on any single source is not going to be enough for it.Therefore, you need to collect data whenever and from wherever you can. It can be from announcement bars, where you can ask your visitor for their details, saying that you'll notify them when the product is launched. Even using subscription boxes is quite an effective way to collect data. It starts gathering basic details when customers sign-up for the program, and with time you get data that tell you about their taste preference, the right size, suitable style, etc.Another great way to collect customer data is by providing your customers with the back-in-stock notification option. There are times when customers visit your Shopify store in quest of a specific product, and they find the item to be out of stock. This situation is inevitable.So instead of leaving your customers disappointed, you can use this situation to show that you actually care about them by allowing them to opt for notification when the product is back in stock. In return, you'll get their contact information and will also know the products that they like. It's a win-win.

Implement this strategy with the Appikon Back in Stock app.

Set up Customer Engagement Campaign

Let's just say you have been collecting emails and contact information for a while. With the help of this data, how do you personalize the content that you send to your visitor? Well, all you can do is mention their names in the content. And it's not enough if you wish to thrive in the eCommerce space. What's the solution, you might ask — engaging with your customers in the right way.Now, engaging customers with various campaigns is one of the best ways to drive repeat business and build brand loyalty. But what it also does is give you better insights and knowledge about the expectations of customers from your brand.You need to create campaigns that help you understand your customers. The more you know about their preferences, the more convenient it'll be for you to send them personalized content. In these engagement campaigns, you'll also need to understand what triggers your customers to make a purchase and what's the right time to send those trigger messages.The bottom line is that you need to know more about your customers than just their names and email addresses. And engaging with them is the only way to know more about them and their preferences. So, engage with them on as many channels as you can for accurate results.

Conduct Segmented Surveys

Considering you have collected a decent amount of data from your customers, it's time now to conduct segmented surveys. Based on what you know about your customers, create segments of emails and SMS.For instance, let's say you deal in fashion and beauty products. There are two types of data that you have collected — one from your makeup products category and another from your clothing section. You can segment this data to target your customers with different messages and notifications.The individuals that shared their details from the apparels section will be more interested in the clothes that you are selling. So, if T-shirts are your go-to product, you can conduct a survey asking your visitor what they would want more from you — regular t-shirts or oversized ones. It'll help you understand what your customers prefer but will also help regulate the inventory.

Offer Customer Support

No matter how much you automate things, there's no replacement for human-to-human interactions. Customers find themselves more comfortable in sharing their expectations with support executives compared to filling forms on the internet.More importantly, only the customers who are genuinely interested in your products and brand will reach out to your support team. They might need the help of experts in making the purchase decisions, or they simply want to know more about the product. Either way, your team gets a chance to interact with them which is a really good opportunity to obtain the information your brand needs.For example, here’s one way to collect phone numbers for your WhatsApp list to offer shopping assistance:

Look Forward to the Cookieless Future of ecommerce

Cookies have been an integral part of digital marketing techniques for ages, but the new policies are disrupting the data and marketing world. This is why you need to make a point of learning about new techniques that are designed to enable targeted marketing in a post-cookie environment.In the cookieless future, how you collect data will define the success of your eCommerce store. And with the help of our back-in-stock app, you can gather the data of your most valuable potential customers and at the same time make their shopping experience convenient and hassle-free.A cookie-free future is a big adjustment, but it's coming, and now's the time to get ready. Need help in collecting data through back-in-stock alerts?Reach out to us today!