What is First Party Data?
Among the recently emerging gems of marketing, first-party data has been winning for the past few months or years. The rise in privacy concerns and invasions through third-party cookies has left third-party cookies far behind.
Google’s efforts aren’t uncovered anymore for optimizing consumer control over what they share with websites. Undoubtedly, the success of countless new touchpoints and sites revolves around better consumer services and data protection programs. Not only do brands utilize it at maximum levels, but they also serve as wealthy data stores to gain impressive ROIs.
First-party data marketing has curated an empowered space for brands to create targeted campaigns and build a strong consumer connection.
What is first-party data? It’s your time to excel and reform your business plan to catch the best clients!
Introduction to First Party Data
According to a precise first-party data definition, «any data or piece of knowledge acquired or collected directly from consumers through major touchpoints». However, the brand that’s putting efforts into collecting, organizing, and utilizing this information is the authorized owner of the data.
First-party data can be collected through multiple channels hosted by a particular brand. Either during random scrolls on mobile apps or finding relevant items to add to the cart, you’re collecting a considerable amount of first-party data!
Examples of First Party Data:
- Social Media Apps
- Consumer interests that match your marketing campaigns
- Social media outlets with maximum outreach
- Location-based information
- Business or work location
- Neighbourhood of a particular consumer
- Coupons usage by various consumer groups
- Individuals who are highly anticipated to buy coupons
- Customers who use and avail exclusive coupons
- Consumers who don’t avail themselves of or actively participate in discount coupon campaigns
- Consumer Demographics
- Customers from diverse age groups
- Education level
- Type of job or business
- Personal life preferences
- Premium subscriptions
- Consumer status in a specific loyalty program or subscription
- Duration of a premium subscription
- Tracking viable premium subscription consumers
- Individual interests and preferences
- Consumer interests towards certain packages, products, and services
- Type of marketing content consumption
- Favourite sites to explore various items
- Acquisition history
- All previous purchases, whether bundles or individual products,
- Premium or free subscription history
- Maximum or minimum acquisition value
- Pitching consumers
Sources of first-party data:
Collecting first-party data isn’t hectic until you know how to extract the target data from the right source.
We’ve summarized the right pain points; here’s how to collect first-party data:
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Mobile Apps
App users can be the most loyal consumers because they’re investing their time into getting the app and interacting there. Your target is to outline the hotspots that are beneficial and can add maximum value to your marketing strengths.
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Brand’s Website
The primary site of interaction is your brand’s web page! With a purposeful first-party data strategy, you can compile a pool of invaluable data, from likeable purchases to useful demographics and whatnot. There’s no single way you can pick the desired fruit; rather, it’s the hub for first-party data.
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Email
While email marketing is one of the basic forms of first-party data marketing, it’s also your unpaid guide to a variety of consumer behaviours. For instance, the way your customers respond to promotional mail creates a categorical data pool to implement targeted marketing based on their interests. Bounce rates, click rates, and many other data collection points pave the way for a first-party data strategy.
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SMS
Being the longest-running marketing format, SMS is a loyal advertising platform to collect personalized data from interested consumers.
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Call centers
As a brand developer or marketing strategist, you won’t take a chance to miss out on information collected through call centers. It’s the right place to initiate consumer bonds and answer their concerns with proper automation investment.
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Mobile web
While all other formats or sources are making the most of first-party data marketing, mobile web may be a step or two behind. While some of the devices don’t cater to cookies, making users sign up is indeed a fruitful move.
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Outlet sales
First-party data explored through outlet sales and CRM plays a crucial role in defining online marketing strategies. It allows brands to have one-on-one interaction with consumers, their go-to shopping sections, maximum purchase value, and everything else required to make a winning pitch for digital marketing campaigns.
How do different types of data correlate with first-party Data?
Online data collection is a homogeneous blend of four subdomains with a new addition: zero-party data. To acquire maximum benefits out of each genre, the strategic backbone must be stronger for each one of them!
First Party Data Vs Second Party Data
First-party data is a direct-driven form of information, where each fragment is extracted with an aim. Contrarily, second-party data is information compiled through shared interests between two parties. Existing data that are relevant to another brand but are stocked by another can be reused in exchange for another service.
Examples of second-party data:
- Demographics
- Public reviews
- Marketing trends
- Consumer-generated media on website
- Premium subscription data
- Buying behaviours or transaction history
- Third-party marketing data
First-party vs. third-party data
Third-party data is assembled by any third party who’s willing to sell it for marketing campaigns or ad retargeting. Unlike first-party data, third-party data is raising privacy concerns among the masses.
Examples of third-party data:
- Online surveys
- Marketplace data
- Consumer segmentation
- Demographics, weather, location, and app usage
- Social media
First-Party Data vs. Zero- Party Data
Zero-party data is a recent innovation, launched with respect to the latest data trends. Zero-party data can be referred to as a «superlative form of first-party data», as it has access to in-depth consumer behaviours, interests, and brand interactions. The mode of collecting data is versatile, as it encourages permission-acquired data collection.
Examples of zero-party data:
- Detailed website analytics
- GPS location
- App usage analytics
- Review and response surveys
- In-depth social media content analysis
- Web browser cookies
- Purchase and transaction records
- Google and other search engine inquiries
Benefits of First-Party Data
First-party data is becoming the gold standard for gaining broader insights into the consumer world. With an impactful data management strategy, your brand’s identity peaks.
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Targeted Marketing
First-party data marketing fills your canvas with the most appropriate colours; it picks up everything accurately and in a well-grounded manner. Moreover, data trends will help you decode this information into the marketing campaign of your choice.
Impactful marketing is all about «the right phenomenon,» that is, targeting the right people at the right time with the right plan of action. Almost 90% of digital advertisers consider it a major component of brand growth and development.
Consumer segregation, or segmentation, is the single most important thing attained by the majority of businesses through their first-party data strategy. Customization and cohesive interpretation are the most innovative beneficiaries of first-party data.
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Exchange of Demographics
A brand can only effectively communicate with its customers if they’re on the same page or can have an interruption-free bond on social media platforms. This gap is greatly overcome by first-party data through shared demographics, including emails, social media handles, contact numbers, etc.
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Positive Consumer-Brand Relationship
It’s rightly predicted that the success of one marketing campaign determines the future of the next and all upcoming ones. Thus, a personalized advertising strategy today will keep winning clients for you tomorrow and every day as it builds brand trust among customers.
The essence of your brand’s motive is embedded in consumers, website visitors, specific social circles, influencers, and whatnot. To keep your aims aligned while serving them at your best, first par-y data refines the process for you. It creates influential marketing while escaping the terrors of continuously changing search engine algorithms.
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Low cost, Higher Revenue
Driving maximum conversions has not been a piece of cake without investing thousands into paid advertising modules before, as it’s become now! First-party data marketing has uplifted your brand’s growth by many folds without making you worry about higher budgets and fewer conversions!
The winning end of the story is that you don’t have to pay separately to know your customers better or to gain their attention. With a first-party data strategy, growth happens at your doorstep without paying high marketing costs or waiting long hours to overview higher bars.
It’s high time you could grow the revenue up to 2X and save 1.5X! It doesn’t stop here; these consumers will be your greatest proponents in the community.
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Building Brand’s Identity
Your brand is as strong as your marketing and consumer-brand relationships. But you’ve already got what you need through first-party data and incorporated it in the best way possible.
Congratulations! There’s no way back from exponential brand growth and identity strengthening! You’re already way ahead of the race and know how to reform marketing preferences in accordance with the fast-revolving globe of trends.
Hence, with the current pace, your brand possesses the capacity to look far behind the sight and innovate new products.
How Can Your Brand Utilize First-Party Data At Its Best?
By far, you’ve gained enough wisdom to inculcate a first-party data strategy into your current business plan. You’re just a few steps away from using first-party data.
Step 1: Analyze Your Webpage
- Keep tracking the landing page data to know if there are any errors or clicks that require modification.
- identify areas that require refinement and create two landing page formats.
- Based on real-time metrics, calculate the strengths of the formats used by two groups of consumers and choose the outstanding one.
- Start tracking the first-party data and keep refining the high-performing areas.
Step 2: Email Marketing
Once you’ve gotten the basic demographics from the web pages, it’s time to create personalized emails according to consumer interests, age groups, gender, location, and preferences.
These emails are highly user-oriented and, unlike the usual spam ones, can engage customers and bring the most conversions.
Step 3: Social Media Platforms
You’re already gaining your consumer’s attention and have an overview of the ideal consumer for your brand. It’s the right time to use the first-party data collected prior to this to create personalized, engaging, and infotainment content across all social media channels.
However, it’s advised to use multiple content formats as you’ll be serving audiences from distinct categories of interest. Similarly, posting content at the right moment is also a critical move when your audience is online and you’ve got their attention.
Step 4: SMS
SMS notifications are the earliest mode of consumer-brand interaction; however, they bring up to three times more conversions than usual.
Based on personalized consumer journeys, you can track their progress to send individualized SMS and earn maximum conversions.
Step 5: Premium Subscriptions
Premium subscriptions or loyalty programs are specifically designed to interact with a specific category of customers. Moreover, you can categorize the services or products that your consumer will pay extra for or enjoy at a discount!
With the evolution of data cookies, first-party data has been the winning successor to third-party data. It’s one of countless other strategies that stand out for their benefits for brand growth and building strong customer relationships. Brands that are leveraging it today will continue to earn the fruit in the future, as a long-term investment. It’s your call to invest in a first-party data strategy today!
FAQ
What is first-party data?
First-party data is information collected directly from your audience or customers by your own organization. It includes data willingly shared by users, such as website interactions, preferences, and purchase history.
How to collect first-party data?
Collect first-party data through methods like website analytics, user registrations, surveys, forms, and interactions on your digital platforms. Consent-driven data collection ensures ethical and legal practices.
Why is first-party data important?
First-party data is valuable for personalized marketing, understanding customer behavior, improving user experiences, and building long-term relationships. It’s considered more reliable and is less affected by privacy concerns than third-party data.
What is a first-party data strategy?
A first-party data strategy involves a plan for systematically collecting, managing, and utilizing data directly obtained from users. It includes ethical data collection practices, compliance with privacy regulations, and leveraging the data for personalized and targeted interactions.