In the evolving landscape of digital commerce, harnessing the potential of first-party data has become paramount for brands striving to understand their audience and drive growth. In this article, we will further understand the meaning of first-party data, how to use it, and its benefits for businesses in 2024.
Table of contents
What is first-party data used for?
How to acquire first-party data?
What is first-party data?
First-party data refers to the information collected directly from your customers or users who interact with your brand's owned channels and platforms. It includes data willingly shared by customers or users through their actions, preferences, and engagements.
This data is sourced from various touchpoints such as a brand's website, app, social media interactions, customer service interactions, or loyalty programs. Unlike second-party or third-party data, which are sourced from external entities, first-party data is inherently authentic and exclusive to your organization.
WHAT is FIRST-PARTY DATA USED FOR?
In essence, first-party data serves as a foundational element for businesses to build strong, customer-centric strategies, fostering better relationships with their audience and driving sustained success in an increasingly data-driven business landscape.
First-party data serves several crucial purposes for businesses, primarily revolving around understanding and engaging with their audience. Here are eight purposes for first-party data:
Customer Understanding
First-party data provides insights into customer behavior, preferences, and interactions with a brand. By analyzing this data, businesses can gain a comprehensive understanding of their audience, enabling them to tailor products, services, and marketing strategies to meet specific needs.
Video commerce solutions like ONLIVE.SITE give brands a competitive advantage. With ONLIVE.SITE, brands have first-party data at their fingertips. With all sales and marketing interactions, brands receive detailed insights related to engagement, audience, purchase intention, and more through a detailed analytics dashboard.
Personalization
One of the primary applications of first-party data is in personalizing customer experiences. Businesses can use this data to customize content, offers, and recommendations, creating a more personalized and relevant experience for individual customers. This personalization enhances customer satisfaction and increases the likelihood of conversion.
ONLIVE.SITE understands the value of personalization, which is why video sharing via email is an important part of its video commerce solutions. Marketing teams can implement video into their email marketing strategy, sharing personalized video content that highlights deals, promotions, and limited-time offers to potential customers. Knowing that video can boost click rates up to 300%, this is an absolute no-brainer.
Targeted Marketing
With first-party data, businesses can segment their audience based on various criteria such as demographics, purchase history, or engagement levels. This segmentation allows for targeted marketing campaigns, ensuring that messages reach the right audience at the right time, thus maximizing the effectiveness of marketing efforts.
Retention Strategies
First-party data plays a vital role in customer retention efforts. By analyzing customer behavior and preferences, businesses can implement retention strategies, such as loyalty programs, personalized communications, and exclusive offers, to keep existing customers engaged and loyal. With ONLIVE.SITE, brands can set discounts, offer promotions, and showcase products during live shopping events and shoppable videos.
Product Development and Improvement
Insights derived from first-party data can inform product development and improvement initiatives. Understanding how customers use products, their feedback, and their pain points helps businesses refine existing offerings and develop new products that align more closely with customer expectations.
Cross-Selling and Upselling
First-party data enables businesses to identify opportunities for cross-selling and upselling. By understanding customers' past purchases and preferences, businesses can recommend complementary products or suggest upgrades, thereby increasing the average transaction value. In recent years, many brands are incorporating video commerce strategies that allow them to dive deeper into purchase intention, trends and preferences. After video calls and live shows, brands can take the gathered insights to improve moving forward and discover key opportunities related to product positioning.
Enhancing Customer Service
Access to first-party data allows brands to provide better customer service. When customer service representatives have comprehensive information about a customer's history and preferences, they can address inquiries more efficiently and provide a more personalized and satisfying experience.
Compliance and Trust Builing
As privacy concerns and regulations become more stringent, first-party data becomes essential for businesses to demonstrate compliance with data protection laws. Since this data is collected directly from customers with their consent, using it responsibly helps build trust and maintain positive relationships with the audience.
Marketing attribution
First-party data aids in attributing marketing success to specific channels or campaigns. By tracking customer interactions and conversion paths, businesses can determine which marketing efforts are most effective, allowing for more informed budget allocation and strategic planning.
HOW TO ACQUIRE FIRST-PARTY DATA?
Brands can gather first-party data through various strategies and channels, all of which involve directly interacting with their audience. It's important to note that obtaining first-party data comes with a responsibility to respect privacy and adhere to data protection regulations. Here are some effective ways brands can collect first-party data:
Website and ecomerce interactions
Encourage users to create accounts or register on your website or ecommerce platform. This allows you to gather key information such as email address, preferences, and purchase history. Brands can also offer incentives like discounts or exclusive content to encourage visitors to subscribe to your newsletter or channels. This provides a direct channel for communication and data collection.
Forms and Surveys
Another way to acquire first-party data is by conducting surveys to gather insights into customer preferences, opinions, and satisfaction levels. Keep surveys concise and incentivize participation when possible. In addition, include feedback forms on your website or app to collect user opinions about their experiences, products, or services.
Social Media Engagement
Create engaging polls, quizzes, and interactive content on social media platforms to encourage user participation and data collection. To incentivize this engagement, run contests or giveaways that require participants to provide information such as email addresses, preferences, or user-generated content.
Mobile Apps
Integrate forms within your mobile apps to collect user information. Ensure that the data collection process is seamless and doesn't disrupt the user experience. Seek permission to send push notifications, as this can be a direct way to engage with users and gather data on preferences and behaviors.
VIRTUAL EVENTS
Strongly consider hosting live virtual events to not only boost your ecommerce efforts, but also to collect valuable first-party data in an engaging, fun way. During live shopping events, brands can share surveys, quizzes, CTAs, or promotions to drive interaction, purchases and retention.
ONLIVE.SITE is a key video commerce tool for brands ready to enhance the ecommerce customer experience. As we all know, consumers are more willing to share valuable information with brands they trust and connect with. With video being the most consumed content type today, video commerce is a leading strategy for ecommerce brands.
CUSTOMER SERVICE INTERACTIONS
Gather information during customer service interactions, but ensure compliance with data protection regulations. Use these interactions to enhance customer profiles and address specific needs. Brands can take customer service to another level by incorporating live chat and video chat throughout their website and other channels. Brands using ONLIVE.SITE enable a floating widget throughout their site to make the customer experience seamless, while collecting first-party data during the process.
CONSENT AND TRANSPARENCY
Clearly communicate to users how their data will be used and seek explicit consent. Transparency builds trust and encourages users to share information willingly. Provide users with options to manage their preferences and control the type and frequency of communication they receive.
By implementing a combination of these strategies, brands can build a robust repository of first-party data. It's crucial to prioritize transparency, offer value to users in exchange for their information, and adhere to privacy regulations to maintain a positive relationship with customers.
Conclusion
In the era of customer experience-driven marketing, first-party data emerges as a strategic asset for driving meaningful engagement, fostering customer loyalty, and achieving sustainable business growth. By understanding the significance of first-party data and implementing effective strategies, brands can unlock the full potential of data-driven marketing and deliver exceptional experiences that resonate with their audience.
Ready to see how ONLIVE.SITE can help you achieve it? Our video commerce solutions enable brands to incorporate many first-party data strategies. Check out more about our solutions, or speak to our team of experts and book a non-committal free demo!
