Enhancing your owned channels is arguably the most critical step. Why? No matter how search shifts, email, mobile, and web will still be the primary drivers of revenue and engagement from existing customers—and retention always trumps acquisition. So pair your new searchability tactics with these best-practices for owned channels:

• Crumble Your Cookies. Whether cookies are deprecating or not has been a years-long snip-snap in marketing. But here’s the thing—first-party data is always the better option as it accurately represents customers’ current contexts and preferences.

• Make a Date with Data. Don’t stop with first-party data, and initiate data collection with fun gamified plays like polls, scratch-offs, or contests.
• Omnichannel Options. Campaigns across channels shouldn’t mean a copy-and-paste experience. Channels should inform each other, and every touchpoint should automatically update when a customer takes action.
• Opt Down, Not Out. Preference centers are another great source for data collection, but make sure that customers opt down, not out. For example, allow them to only get notifications via mobile and nothing in their inbox if they choose.

Optimize omnichannel strategies and shore up preference center best-practices in Magenta Friday: Mobile Mastery on-demand.

• Predict with Precision. Sometimes customers want you to just know what they want. Combine your traditional data-driven tactics with AI-powered personalization, so that you can send content at the right time, place, and frequency before customers even think to ask.
• Protect Incoming Data. Data and AI haven’t always had the best relationship in the news, from data leaks to, well, more data leaks. Beef up your data privacy practices before a data conundrum occurs.