First-Party Data: Optimization Tips for Marketers

With the demise of third-party data, brands are presented with an opportunity to invest in modern data infrastructure and build trust with customers. But, how do marketers collect and optimize first-party data through better processes? Let us explore:

For years, brands have leveraged third-party data to power their large-scale marketing campaigns. Third-party data is data collected by third-parties and shared with you. These data sets are indeed extensive, but they tend to be less rich. Such data was favored for broad-reaching campaigns, but over a period, this data become less effective. Amidst the data chaos, there was a need for more effective data, and factors such as consumer sentiment, privacy concerns, and legislation made third-party data risky. So, the era of such data ended and marketers were left with various strategies for first-party data collection to focus on. 

What is first-party data? 

“An effective privacy-conscious first-party data strategy must account for the entire data lifecycle, right from collection, to management and storage, to activation.” First-party data is preferred over second-party and third-party data. 

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What Helps?

Create a roadmap of your first-party data

First-party data is a foundation of a broader, omni-channel marketing strategy aimed to achieve marketing funnel objectives. The data can help to improve customer loyalty, retention, and upselling opportunities. You must define your marketing and customer experience goals and objectives, the tactics and analytics required to execute the strategy. Breaking down the long-term effort into small goals will show you incremental ROI at each stage. 

Determining the right data at the right sources

You have already defined your data collection sources, but it is time to audit the data sources to identify what is being generated and how it is coming to your organization. Cross-check your data sources and points with the required data to align with the marketing and analytics use cases you plan to implement and make sure that the data collected is useful to achieve your marketing objectives. 

Demanding more from the data

In any given context, first-party data is critical to creating personal and meaningful customer experiences. Take a step further and integrate online and offline data company-wide to drive customer-centric programs aligning with marketing products and services. 

Benchmarking and monitoring over time

There are various points to collect your first-party data such as feedback forms, reviews, and more, you must evaluate the first-party data capabilities, monitor it, and integrate everything that you have learned so far in this journey. You must identify the key success metrics to find the best marketing solution. 

Despite the evolution in collecting first-party data, many marketers are still limited to one channel at a time. This calls for the integration of data from all customer touchpoints, understanding the entire buyer journey, and improving overall marketing performance. 

Here are a few first-party data marketing use cases: 

1. Target precision – It is time to let go of the cookie-based tactics and move towards leveraging a brand’s first-party data to identify real people across channels and devices. 
2. Mapping the customer journey – By accessing the first-party data from a customer, marketers can learn more about the entire customer journey, discover various steps that they have taken on their path towards conversion. This helps marketers to push the right message at the right time to the right person. 
3. Advance Omni-channel measurement – Connecting and integrating data from all the channels help brands to see the way a customer moves from an email to a website to a mobile app before completing the purchase. With this aerial view of a customer journey, marketers and segment and optimize for different audiences. 
4. Create a single view of the customer – It is no wonder that one customer is represented by various profiles as they engage with the brands through various online and offline channels. First-party data collection can help to merge these touchpoints and create a unified profile of a customer allowing marketers to understand what inspires customers to act. 

First-party data is the future of digital marketing. The world of digital marketing is in constant flux. To keep pace with such fast-paced marketing, business owners must understand the need for precise data-collection. 

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The use of first-party data can not only help increase website traffic, but it will also boost marketing strategies, improve customer experience. As there are raised concerns over third-party practices, the time is now to revolutionize the use of first-party data.