Know your Customer: Champion the Next Era of Marketing with Twilio Segment

Learn how customer focused marketing, first-party data and omnichannel strategies are shaping industry trends where customer engagement is truly intelligent in this fireside chat with Sara Varni, CMO Twilio moderated by Katrina Wong, VP of Marketing at Segment. Watch here.

Earlier this month, Google released its latest anti-tracking announcement, stating it would no longer support individual-based tracking and targeting across website properties. One of many announcements made across the industry from players such as Google, Apple, and Mozilla, many companies are aligning themselves with broader shifts around consumer data privacy. 

Whether it’s GDPR, iOS 14, or the death of the third-party cookie, marketers today feel like everything they know about digital is shifting. At the same time, the pressure to deliver highly personalized experiences has never been greater. 

Transparency around customer identity is key for brands to protect consumer privacy, gain consumer trust, and build better customer relationships. As the center of customer identity for 25,000+ companies, Twilio Segment has continued to learn from and provide companies with the latest features in privacy by design.

• Take control of your first-party customer data: Now available in public beta, Segment offers Local Data Ingestion and Local Data Storage, as well as an updated analytics.js library to provide customers more control over where, what, and how customer data is collected.

• Deliver privacy-first experiences: With a trusted “control center” of customer data, brands can then rethink their marketing strategies with first-party data in mind. Segment’s latest investments in advertising audience integrations, including Snapchat and Pinterest, empower advertisers to optimize efficiency without the third-party cookie to build better relationships with their customers.

• Achieve true omnichannel experiences: With the explosion of customer touchpoints, omnichannel experiences require brands to activate across a growing martech stack. With Segment’s latest Functions updates, companies have even more flexibility in how customer data is delivered across their stack.

Take control of your first-party customer data

By 2023, 65% of the world’s population will be governed by local privacy regulations. As a growing number of countries introduce legislation to protect consumer data privacy, companies are recognizing the value in taking more control over their customer data and identity, including where their data is stored and processed.

To help companies easily route events to regional infrastructure Segment has introduced Local Data Ingestion and Local Data Storage, both in public beta globally. These capabilities are available in APAC, EMEA, the US and around the globe. Read more about our data residency roadmap here → 

In addition to helping companies with data residency, we’ve re-engineered the library that started it all: analytics.js. Now available in public beta, Analytics.js 2.0 upgrades our most popular and beloved library source to improve site performance and provide developers with more control over first-party data collection, including adding privacy and consent controls before an event occurs. Read more about Analytics 2.0 (Beta) →

Deliver privacy-first experiences

While personalization has the potential to create trillions of dollars in value, delivering 1:1 engagement with customers that haven’t interacted with you before actually creates the inverse effect.

Regardless of regulations (GDPR, CCPA) or large tech companies (see Google Chrome, Apple ITP, Apple iOS 14 ATT, and Mozilla ETP), data transparency and control is a consumer trend that’s been years in the making. Just think about products like Signal or Duck Duck Go, or even trends like Finstas; all of these services offer consumers more control over information flow.

The next generation of consumers demand privacy-first and consumer-first experiences, and in return, are more willing to engage with businesses that they trust. A first-party data strategy is the best starting point for brands to establish greater trust with their consumers.

Especially in advertising, an industry known to be powered by third-party data, we’ve witnessed great success from our customers who use first-party data to power their retargeting and acquisition strategies. In fact, ecommerce retailer Stylepit nearly doubled return on ad spend (ROAS) without the cookie. (Sign up for our upcoming webinar to hear how →)

To date, Segment has made significant investments to optimize – and even improve – our customers’ advertising efficiency without third-party cookies. Today, we added Pinterest to our growing suite of native ad platform integrations to power known retargeting and acquisition via lookalike audiences. Read more about our approach to cookieless advertising here.

Achieve true omnichannel experiences

The growth of new products and services in the martech ecosystem has exploded, empowering brands to implement unique ways of putting their customer data to work. At the same time, nearly 45% of martech users acknowledge that their current tech stacks are too complex (Forrester), and only 36% of retail and brand professionals claim to offer a "somewhat” or “very” consistent cross-channel personalized experience (Forrester).

(P.S. Register for Iterable Activate Live 2021 to hear how Blue Bottle Coffee successfully achieves a consistent cross-channel experience across digital and in-store environments with Segment and Iterable.)

A best-in-breed, multi-channel approach to marketing technology requires a centralized, clean source of customer data to activate. Regardless of the marketing tool, Segment’s extensible platform grants customers more control and flexibility into where, when and how their customer data is delivered across their stack.

To power true omnichannel experiences across any tool, our latest update to Functions enables customers to aggregate customer data into “batches” before sending to downstream destinations. Now available in public beta, Batching for Destination Functions allows marketers to send audience lists to any marketing tool.

Take the next step in digital marketing

As industry standards continue to evolve and we shift away from third-party cookies, it's a pivotal time to get to know your customer. With Segment, you can unlock your customer data and build personalized experiences that delight customers at every touchpoint, all while respecting consumer privacy.

And, with Twilio and Segment, you can say hello to the future of customer engagement. Join us for a fireside chat on April 27 with Sara Varni, CMO Twilio moderated by Katrina Wong, VP of Marketing at Segment where they will discuss the importance of customer focused marketing, the power of first-party data, and omnichannel strategies. Register today!