As marketers have been challenged to ensure the transition to durability is pacing with the depreciation of Universal Analytics, the best-in-class realize that these changes will affect more than their team’s initiatives. Understanding the impacts of the changes, such as how their daily operations will shift, requires multiple considerations around first-party data, reliance on third-party data, and data ingestion/architecture. However, one of the main challenges is communicating these changes to business owners and stakeholders cross-departmentally.
Making the Most of a Partnership
Often, our partnerships with clients begin with marketing teams (data analysts, digital marketers) and as we grow the relationship, it extends to IT, data/privacy, and BI/data science teams. Our colleagues are continually looking for ways to extend our partnership amongst these teams in terms of providing thought leadership and communicating how these changes cascade to downstream systems. Our enterprise clients tend to be on the forefront in creating cross-functional task forces that collaborate on a roadmap and milestones to hit in order to prepare for the changes. However, clients are challenged with the steps needed to ensure their teams are aligned and coordinating with additional stakeholders.
We’ve seen more success when our partners appoint a team lead as the data privacy advocate and then establish the cross-departmental task force. Creating this team at the start of the transition to a privacy-centric organization, and building consensus prior to creating a roadmap will go a long way in building the foundation for greater adoption. These changes will affect each team—from those who manage data ingestion through visualization—each business owner should have a working knowledge to align for privacy readiness. When these teams are not created, often we find different departments duplicating efforts, creating misalignment and a lack of a cohesive strategy.
Get Ready … Change Is Coming
Organizations need to move quickly, not only to meet the timeline, but to be in a place where they are able to test and learn prior to the changes (understand audiences, enhance targeting on unknown visitors, using clean rooms to measure unattributed sales). Not only will this allow organizations to maintain a competitive edge, but by creating transparency and trust with their customers sooner it will position the brand as privacy-centric before the change forces it.
As trusted partners, we are committed to helping our clients navigate this transition, providing them with best practices and assisting their teams across the various verticals we serve. Many organizations are approaching us for a roadmap that they can share with their teams and enquiring about additional support to help them navigate. From strategic risk/privacy assessments, to building models, to Google Analytics 4 packages or a comprehensive timeline strategy, at InfoTrust we can meet our clients where they are in their privacy-centric journey.
