Marketers will be navigating through rough waters over the next 5 years, and in order to succeed in the face of these challenges they are going to need to double down on personalization.  That might sound like a monumental task when you factor in the demise of the cookie.  The moves from Apple and Google are forcing their hands, but there are still interesting options available to marketers interested in investing in cookieless personalization.  Unfortunately, most marketers have been too busy fighting day to day battles to identify all of the solutions available to them, and now is the time to find out.

Understanding where the world is heading is important for marketers.  Beyond just the disappearance of the cookie, there are increased pressures from a slowing economy, competition heating up from the largest retailers expanding their product categories, and marketing channels becoming less and less profitable.  Combine these issues with the fact that engineering resources are scarce and these challenges tie marketers' hands in ways that feel insurmountable.

Every marketer needs to future proof their business, and one way to do so is to make sure that the systems they're relying on to personalize the journeys of their customers are built for the future.

Here are 3 easy tips to future-proof your personalization strategy

• Fuel your personalization with context - marketers can use originating traffic source, destination url, broad geolocation, and build an understanding of how the myriad of permutations lead to or detract from conversions.  All of these permutations do not rely on PII - and each of them, when understood together, create patterns of behavior that marketers can respond to with personalized content.  For example, if Site A sends traffic to you through ads, influencers, or other content types - and you see that Site A users over index utilizing your App, you know this is a rich environment to show an App Install call to action (CTA).

• Invest in software and AI that enables you to test without code - one of the biggest challenges for marketers is running tests with limited resources.  That said, when you study the best category leading companies (that have the most resources), you often see that experimentation is in their DNA - think Amazon and Expedia.  There are a number of companies that enable testing of solutions to simplify and accelerate understanding of what works well for your audience.  Great companies to consider are Optimizely, UserTesting, and Button's PostTap product which leverages AI to personalize marketing at scale without requiring marketers to write code.

• Capture more 1st party relationships - with 3rd party data and cookies going away, enabling direct connections with your customers is a must.  Marketers should be striving to drive more app acquisition where conversion is 3x higher than in mobile web, collect phone numbers and email for SMS and email marketing, and use this 1st party data to both "communicate" but also to connect with these "opt-in" consumers past buying behavior.

Marketers will be better served if they focus on the 3 tactics above, and there are a number of companies that can support these initiatives.  

That's why Button has created a traffic personalization solution, powered by AI, that enables marketers to use data and signals that are permissible, compliant, non-PII, and not cookie dependent to offer a future-proofed personalization solution.  We call it PostTap, and it gives marketers the ability to personalize at scale through "context" rather than "troves of user data".   By making PostTap not require a ton of code to test, we've made adopting the strategy above as easy as pushing a button.  

Learn more and check out all of our incredible case studies here.