What is first-party data?
First-party data is customer information that your company has gathered and owns through various software and systems. Using this data, your company can then create ads, content, and experiences that are tailored to a person’s interests.
Some first-party data include:
- Subscriber data from emails and newsletters
- Social data
- Data that you have gathered in your CRM
- Data collected from surveys
- Data collected from online chats
- Data from campaigns
- Past website behaviour
- Past app behaviour
With the disappearance of cookies by 2023 and new privacy policies introduced by numerous platforms, first-party data is now becoming the primary source of truth in digital marketing automation and digital media.
So what is the value of first-party data?
Well, for starters, first-party data is completely owned by you, and you alone! With first-party data, you will be able to utilise it to get amazing insights into your audience. These insights offer many benefits, such as:
- More accurate audience creation and targeting
- Higher level of personalisation
- Foster strong relationships with your customers
- Lower costs
- Full control over the data
- Increase your marketing ROI
There are several ways you can use first-party data for your marketing strategy.
You might use it to:
- Build brand awareness
- Design single mailing and/or programmatic ads
- Drive higher leads
- Increase marketing ROI
- Reduce customer churn
To begin, you should always make a plan for how you intend to collect your first-party data. Are you considering using data from website visitors or social media channels? Perhaps data from your past campaigns. Whatever you choose, you will need a plan to gather your first-party data.
Following that, consider how you intend to use your first-party data. This is an important step because it will know ahead of time what type of first-party data you will need to collect. And, well, planning is always a good way to know where your business is going and what kind of re-targeting ads or personalised product recommendations you’ll be doing!
Oh, and don’t forget to ask your audience for permission! It’s vital to be transparent about the fact that you are gathering data from your audience, be it on your website or your mobile app. Being transparent about the data you collect isn’t just the right thing to do, but it is also required by the law in some countries!
Once you have your first-party data, you can test it against your target audience with some testing ads to see how they react. Not working so well? Well, adjust it and try again! The goal is to find something that your audience reacts to positively and figure out what is best for your business!
So there we have it! First-party data in a nutshell! How will you be using your first-party data?
