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Make Your Business Resilient With First-Party Data

Technological advancements have created opportunities for both consumers and marketers alike. As a consumer, I love the moment when I find a new product or brand through an Instagram ad, and as a marketer, I love hearing when people connect with brands they love. This type of personalized experience is a stark contrast to the days of broad messages and tactics hoping to find the right customer.

It’s good for people and it’s good for businesses.

However, the changes to advertising over the last few years have made it more challenging for marketers to drive these connected experiences. Marketers need to develop strategies to respectfully gather and use customer data. To stay competitive in this new era of digital advertising and ads ecosystem, businesses need to take a holistic, innovative approach.

High quality, first-party data, which is the data that you receive directly from your customers and own across on and offline channels, can offer you an opportunity to deepen your relationships with your customers, collect more accurate information and activate across multiple channels.

While many brands have yet to embrace the potential of first-party data, the time to do so is now. According to Deloitte, “First-party data offers extensive opportunities to strengthen client relationships via owned media and can serve as an identifier for activation across platforms.”

Why is first-party data impactful?

Even if you haven’t invested in a first-party data infrastructure or strategy, you may already have this data at your fingertips. Unlike second- and third-party data, first-party data is owned by you and received directly from your customers.

With this data, you can create profiles and views of your customers using your technologies to create niche targeting and campaigns across a mix of channels. If you’re sitting on this treasure trove of information that could drive ROI, it can be intimidating to know where to start. Here are three steps to help you.

Assess your foundations

It’s critical that you understand how your company is using first-party data right now. Ask your team questions like: Where do your customers share their information with you? Are you using technology to segment and analyze? How are you using it to reach your customers directly?

If you’re not actively strategizing around first-party data, ask yourself what it might look like if you were.

As you assess your foundations, also consider how you’re sending data to ensure that it’s a resilient solution. Integrating a signal router—which passes first-party data directly from an advertiser’s platform to a walled-garden platform, like the Conversions API—can be a key component to activating your strategy as it can help establish more reliable connections.

Understand the value exchange

The truth is that people expect personalized experiences. In fact, according to McKinsey, 71% of consumers surveyed expect companies to deliver personalized interactions. They also want to feel safe sharing personal information.

When you’re asking for information about a customer or prospective customer, be sure to offer transparency, clarity and control, as well as value. In other words, give them something valuable in exchange for their information.

Prepare to execute your strategy in phases

Executing your strategy will come in three phases: acquisition, build and activation.

As marketers, the first thing you might think of as it relates to acquisition is lead generation. One way we commonly collect leads are pop-up modals on the homepage. Pop-ups, when done correctly, can be effective. But it’s important to be mindful of how intrusive they can be to the user’s experience and to follow best practices like delaying the pop-up and ensuring the user can easily get back to what they were browsing.

You can also receive data in the checkout flow, as well as through engagement in loyalty programs and emails. If you’re not sure how to get started, you might want to consider an in-platform experience like Lead Ads, which supports lead generation experiences.

Next is the build phase. You can use the data you received to build user segments and views of the entire customer journey. Finally, activate your segments. You can reconnect with your existing audiences or connect with new ones by activating your strategy across channels like SMS, email or paid media.

As marketers, it’s our job to create experiences that honor our customer’s expectations. This includes ensuring that your strategies are aligned with local privacy guidelines and offer user controls. Be sure to check-in with your legal team for support.

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It’s critical that marketers prepare now as the ecosystem continues to evolve. If you’d like to learn more about activating a strong first-party data strategy and other resilient marketing solutions, watch our webinar or visit our site.