End of Third-Party Cookies Are Yet Another Opportunity for the IRR Market

As if the growing challenges of engaging customers, employees, distribution, and supply chain partner communities were not enough, or the need for many large companies to make very specific stakeholder engagement disclosures in the new European Union Corporate Sustainability and Reporting Directive, marketers now face the daunting task of shifting to an almost totally permission-based approach to marketing. This is creating yet another opportunity for the effective use of incentives.

What does the arcane world of third-party cookies have to do with the incentive, rewards, and recognition business? A lot, at least for those incentive, recognition, loyalty, and gift card and merchandise providers who understand the opportunity: the emergence of the long-discussed concept of permission marketing and what that entails for marketers.

This week, RRN’s sister publication ESM published the article, “Does the End of Third-Party Cookies Spell the Return of Permission Marketing?”

In 1999, marketing guru Seth Godin published the book, Permission Marketing, Turning Strangers Into Friends and Friends Into Customers,” in which he wrote: “Instead of annoying potential customers by interrupting their most coveted commodity, time, permission marketing offers consumers incentives to voluntarily accept advertising. Now the Internet pioneer who has dramatically improved marketing effectiveness in media introduces a fundamentally different way of thinking about advertising products and services. By reaching out to only those individuals who have expressed an interest in learning more about a product, Permission Marketing enables companies to develop long-term relationships with customers, create trust, build brand awareness, and greatly improve the chances of making a sale.” While many organizations conduct one form or another of permission marketing, it's safe to say that few have a strategic and systematic approach to identifying and cultivating relationships with customers, prospects and all stakeholders on a single, permission-managed basis.

Despite the ability of the Internet and marketing expertise to engage people to opt-in to receive highly personalized messages, two technology factors stood in the way of many marketers from making the shift from what Godin called “interruption marketing” to permission-marketing: 1) search engine advertising, which only interrupts people to the extent the screen space is devoted to ads related to the topic for which they are searching, and 2) third-party cookies, the little bits of code most people have voluntarily accepted that enables those companies to place ads on thousands of media sites without any direct permission.

Marketing experts such as the widely followed Neil Patel believe the end of third-party cookies and the remarketing practices they power will require a fundamental change in the approach to marketing much like that envisaged by Godin.

What’s changing? The companies that support the major browsers, Chrome, Bing, and Firefox all have made a commitment to removing the use of third-party cookies, which is making it increasingly difficult to place ads on web sites networks or even to conduct re-marketing, which many companies have used for years.

That means that companies will increasingly have to induce people to opt-in to get permission. This in turn will drive demand for incentives such as sweepstakes, contests, loyalty, and gifting programs using merchandise, gift cards, experiences, and more to get people to say yes to being marketed to on an ongoing basis.

For More Information

Bruce Bolger, Founder
Enterprise Engagement Alliance at TheEEA.org
914-591-7600, ext. 230
Bolger@TheEEA.org

RRN: Your Partner in Success in Incentives, Rewards, and Recognition

Published by the Enterprise Engagement Alliance at TheEEA.org

The only weekly news, how-to and resource publication of record for the Incentive, Rewards, and Recognition field.
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Contact Bruce Bolger at 914-591-7600, ext. 230 or email Bolger@TheEEA.org when you want to get to know or get known in this growing $176 billion marketplace.

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All the industry news, research, announcements, and how-to articles read by over 20,000 end-users in sales, marketing, and human resources; incentive, recognition, loyalty and promotional companies, as well as marketing and human resources agencies, seeking to enhance performance through effectively designed incentive programs.
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The EEA is dedicated to helping address the fact that the IRR business remains a little-known industry.

The Association of National Advertisers education effort reaches the CMOs of almost every leading brand to promote our industry and the importance of program design through created for their members.
The Brand Media Coalition has led the way in helping brands better tell their stories for use in incentive, recognition, and loyalty programs, and to actively promote the importance of the reward experience and buying through industry channels.
The Enterprise Engagement Alliance is assisting companies with the upcoming Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, which includes details on the practices and metrics involved with employee and customer engagement.

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Join the Enterprise Engagement Alliance to master the processes of enterprise engagement, stakeholder management and reporting, or contact the EEA to get expert assistance on strategy design, implementation, and reporting.

RRN: Your Partner in Success in Incentives, Rewards, and Recognition

Contact Bruce Bolger at 914-591-7600, ext. 230 or email Bolger@TheEEA.org when you want to get to know or get known in this growing $1.76 billion marketplace.