Digital marketing, as the cornerstone of user connectivity in this digitalized world, is utilized by businesses to track users to understand their behavior. Tracking users across the web is important to know what they like and what not. This tracking is also crucial for marketers to target ads more effectively, identifying users browsing habits.
Continue reading to learn: ‘What is the digital marketing strategy that tracks users across the web?’
Tracking Users Across the Web
Online advertising has created countless opportunities for marketers or advertisers to reach potential customers. The advertising ecosystem is composed of intermediate technologies and entities that work collaboratively to deliver personalized ads to customers as per their preferences. But how is it possible for advertisers to know what web users like? How are they going to personalize their ads without having an insight into the users’ browsing habits? The answer to all these questions is- user tracking.
By tracking users across the web, marketers intend to identify user preferences to customize their ads for target customers. With digital marketing, this task has been simplified, helping marketers track users across various devices on the web.
Cross-device or Cross-Channel Marketing
With a growing adaptation of multiple devices by users, advertisers move towards advanced targeting practices. These practices are specifically designed to track and target users across all their devices. Transiting the advertising landscape from device-centric to user-centric, the phenomenon of cross-device tracking took birth within the digital marketing realm.
Cross-device tracking is the digital marketing strategy that tracks users across the web. Cross-device or cross-channel marketing is a strategic process that sends personalized messages to consumers using multiple devices, such as smartphones, computers, and tablets. The purpose of this marketing strategy is to create a seamless experience for end-users and customers across various devices.
Importance of Personalized Ads
Users find highly personalized ads relevant as they increase their sense of vulnerability. With the help of these ads, advertisers effectively increase users’ engagement with their products or services. Personalized ads have multidimensional benefits for both users and marketers. It not only improves customer experience but also increases conversion rates and boosts brand loyalty.
Advantages of Cross-Device Tracking
Cross-device tracking, as an effective digital marketing strategy, tracks users across the web and serves multiple benefits. Here are some of its advantages-
-
360-Degree Customer View
The cross-device marketing strategy that tracks users across the web allows marketers a 360-degree customer view. A complete view of the customer’s interaction with the brand develops a clear understanding of their behaviors across devices.
-
Understanding of the User’s Journey
Most companies rely solely on cookies to interact with users, struggling to connect the dots between user activities. With cross-channel tracking, an in-depth understanding of the customer’s journey across various devices is developed. A clear apprehension of their behaviors translates into a better understanding of their conversion, purchase, or moving away intentions.
-
Better Customer Engagement and Improved Conversion
When you are able to track how your customers are interacting with your website, app, TV commercials, and digital ads, you can ensure their better engagement. Knowing the influence of all your promotions and platforms on users allows you to spend on high-converting campaigns. Similarly, you can eliminate the campaigns that are not performing well to avoid consumers shifting from your brand.
-
Personalizing Brand Messages
Having enough information about a target group leads to data-driven predictions about their behaviors across the web. Understanding the user’s preferences allows delivering messages that resonate. With cross-device tracking, marketers send user-relevant messages to ensure a response from them. This marketing strategy helps in tailoring brand messages to users’ preferences, not only to increase brand image but also consumers’ loyalty to the brand.
Types of Cross-Device Tracking
Cross-device tracking is of two types – Deterministic and Probabilistic. In deterministic tracking, companies invite visitors to sign in to their websites and applications. This helps them connect each user’s device to their account credentials. Signing in to a website from a computer and then signing in to it from a mobile application will help deterministic cross-device tracking to recognize the users as the same.
Probabilistic cross-device tracking uses complex algorithms to capture user activity across devices. Relying on signals rather than first-party identifiers helps analyze data points to identify which user uses which devices. IP addresses, browsing patterns, operating systems, user location, WiFi network, and device proximity are used to analyze consumer data in this cross-device tracking.
Associated Risks
Similar to other technologies, cross-device tracking also has its own risks. While cross-device tracking tracks users across the web, it poses several risks-
- Security: Storing digital data poses security risks of data leakage. However, this can be minimized by using encryption methods while storing data.
- Privacy: The massive collection of consumer data by businesses is often done without customers’ consent. This can lead to misuse of their personal information.
- Degraded Customer Experience: Matching multiple devices to a single user often gets difficult, leading to degraded customer experience.
- Cybercrimes: Collected consumer data can be hacked by cybercriminals for criminal activities like fraud, hacking, ransomware attacks, and others. Businesses can strengthen their IT infrastructure to avoid cybercrimes.
- Complexities in Data Merging: Merging user data across various devices is a complex task, leading to errors in data merging sometimes.
Cross-device tracking marketing strategy tracks users across devices as a part of businesses’ marketing activities. In the world of digital evolution, insight into consumer data can help marketers achieve higher consumer engagement to increase sales. With cross-device tracking, this insight is developed, leading to better consumer engagement and conversion.
