B2B Marketing, Account Based Marketing

You simply cannot visit a website these days without getting one of those troubling notifications. You know the one that goes: “This website uses cookies..” and a pop-up window emerges imploring you to accept or reject these cookies before letting you get anywhere.

These websites offer you an opportunity to accept all cookies or no cookies (if they are ruder then there’s no option to reject them) or accept only certain kinds of cookies- and it demands an answer right away.

Yes, it’s quite alarming.

But here’s what you need to know- while accepting cookies can compromise your digital privacy in unnerving ways, it can’t infect your system with viruses or other kinds of malware. So, what exactly are cookies? They are simple text files that can be used to track users across different websites and devices. Many businesses and B2B marketing agencies use these website tracking services as a part of their marketing automation drip.

For example: Is the bounce rate too high on your website or pages? Your visitors may not be finding what they want or expected, which is why they left so quickly. Thus, comes in the role of cookies. Once visitors are subscribed to your content and you have them listed in your database, forcing them to accept cookies whenever they visit a page can pinpoint exactly which of your subscribers paid a visit to your page and what they did once they got there.

This unlocks a plethora of options for the modern marketer who now has a way to identify and follow their subscribers’ every move, segregating them into different accounts based on behaviour and other demographics to trigger automated personalized campaigns as a part of their deep rooted account based marketing strategy. This is automation in its most powerful form.

Different Types Of Cookies

This brings us to the different flavours of browser cookies and their uses-

1. First-Party Cookies

These cookies are written and set by the website visited by the user. The data collected using these cookies can be used for calculating page views, sessions and number of users. Even Google Analytics uses first party cookies to understand user behaviour and for recommending content or presenting it to the publishers for their website’s understanding.

2. Third-Party Cookies

These cookies are created and set by domains that are not directly visited by the user. If the website publisher adds third-party elements like adverts, social plugins, chatbots etc. these third-party cookies can track user actions for behavioral advertising.

3. Session Cookies

These are cookies that are stored in the browser itself and expire immediately or only lasts for a few seconds after the user exits the web browser. The data from session cookies is used to calculate each user session on the browser for analytical purposes.