We’ve known since late 2020 that Apple iOS had some privacy updates in store for us, and they are finally here. If you haven’t already made changes to adapt your remarketing strategy, there are still some things you can do.
About the Privacy Updates
Before looking at how to adapt to the changes, make sure you understand what changes occurred and why Apple made them.
Previously, if an iOS user wanted to opt-out of having an app collect browsing data, they had to go to settings and manually opt-out. With the update, opting-out becomes the default, not opting-in. When users download an app on iOS 14, they will be asked for permission to share and collect data via a prompt.
This is important for marketing because that data helps you personalize your app and do so much more. You use that data for personalization, segmentation, retargeting, exclusion targeting, and lookalike audiences, among other functions.
That means that if your users opt-out, you will lose the ability to perform all of those functions, or at least the effectiveness of doing so. It can have a particularly strong effect on your Facebook marketing, as the social media platform uses many of those features in its advertising capabilities.
Why Apple Changed Its Privacy Policy
The reason for the update comes down to privacy. Apple prides itself on being a “privacy-first” company and this is just one step in the process of ensuring that is the case.
Now that you know what these privacy updates are and the reasons behind them, it’s time to tweak your remarketing strategies. This will minimize the impact of the privacy update on your marketing efforts while helping your business adapt.
Below are some tips you can follow.
1. Verify Your Domain on Facebook’s Business Manager
If you haven’t already done so, go to your Facebook Business Manager account and verify your domain. If you skip this step, you may not be able to configure conversion events on Facebook.
2. Expand Your Customer Acquisition Channels
While the update will affect every app on iPhones and iPads, you should expect to see a more significant impact on your Facebook advertising than other platforms. This is because of the way Facebook uses cookies and data.
The best way to overcome this is to expand your customer acquisition channels, especially if your focus was primarily on Facebook. Even if you already have several customer acquisition channels, consider adding a few more. After all, each will likely become slightly less effective if you rely on cookies.
3. Go All-In on Email Marketing
The privacy update is also the perfect opportunity to boost your email marketing strategy. You can use email for many of the same remarketing tasks you would do with other types of ads, such as offering discounts, sharing sales, and sharing product tutorials. You can also use email marketing to recover abandoned carts, request reviews, and more.
Most importantly, email marketing strategies don’t rely as strongly on tracking and cookies. Instead, these methods have more to do with purchases and registration. You may even segment your email audience via surveys or sign-up forms.
That being said, remember that some of your email marketing efforts, including segmentation and abandoned product emails, do rely on cookies.
4. Get Data from Other Sources
When talking about email marketing, we hinted at some other sources of data, such as surveys or asking questions in sign-up forms. Use these and other methods to get the data you can no longer count on from iOS.
One excellent source is your website’s metrics. Your website will already be monitoring where visitors come from and what they do on your website. While you won’t be able to connect those actions to specific users, you can still see general trends.
If you want to focus on sign-up forms and self-reported data, create more landing pages. Or consider using chatbots to interact with users and then creating lookalike audiences based on those interactions.
5. Focus Your Efforts on Android Devices
You should also keep in mind that while a lot of people have iPhones, even more use Android devices. This means that even if you no longer have access to some of the data you use for retargeting iPhone users, you still have that data for Android users. If you focus your efforts on Android devices, you should be able to make up for at least some of the loss of data from iOS users.
Conclusion
With the latest privacy update, iOS users have to opt-in to share their data with you. This may limit your ability to target, segment, and personalize content. But you can overcome this by getting data from other sources and expanding your marketing channels, along with a few other simple strategies.
