What are (Web) Cookies and How Do Marketers Use Them?

If you’ve spent enough time online, you’ve probably heard of the term “cookies” before. But what does it mean? A cookie, also known as HTTP cookies or web cookies, is a code snippet added to a web browser when a user visits a certain website and consents to the website’s use of cookies. The user’s browser then stores that code over a predetermined time set by its creators or until a user deletes it, changing how browsers interact with certain websites.

So, how do you know when cookies are in action? If you’ve ever experienced these encounters, that’s how you know:

Returned to a website where you’re automatically signed in.
Found items still in your shopping cart.
Saw the physical store location you picked last time on an e-commerce site you’ve been on before.
Discovered the product you were looking at during another session advertised in your email or on another website.
Checked out a purchase with your payment and shipping preference already stored and selected.

How Do Marketers Use Cookies?

With cookies, digital marketers can learn more about users coming onto their sites and better track users’ behavior on their websites. Knowing how people behave makes it easier to target potential customers and market to your users in the future since it’ll give you a good idea of what works and what doesn’t work on your website.

What marketers use cookies for:

Targeting: more user data and behavioral information that will help define target audience groups.
Personalization: after signing up for an email newsletter or purchasing a product on a website, cookies will remember the info users have filled in for the next time they come to that website.
Tracking: with more data on users, marketers can then use that data to better market in the future with targeted marketing campaigns.

Overall, cookies can be an invaluable tool for marketers. With the ability to collect more user data, marketers can use all of that to optimize their future marketing campaigns, resulting in more effective efforts.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.