Successful digital marketing depends squarely on data collection. Before you can start a marketing campaign, you need to have collected data to guide your marketing strategy. As third-party cookies are being phased out eyes now turn to first-party data. It’s the new frontier in the competition to reach out to potential customers. Software companies continue to develop more efficient data tools for 1st Party Data Tracking for Agencies.
But what is first-party data? This is simply data collected directly from a company’s audiences such as social media followers, website visitors, active leads, online store customers, event attendees, and others. Second-party data is collected by a business’s partners, while third-party data is collected from unrelated entities.
Data here simply consists of secrets about customers: what they like/dislike watching or talking about online, places they visit, their shopping habits, lifestyles, where they live, their social status, etc.
With that out of the way, here are 5 marketing benefits of First-party data tracking:
- Ability to Personalize Customer Experience
Modern customers love special treatment. Each customer wants to be treated specially — like they are the only customer. They don’t want to see themselves as part of the numbers. So, how does a business cater to each customer’s particular needs? By gathering first-party data and personalizing their marketing campaigns to meet each customer’s taste, behavioral patterns, or preferences.
So, the first-party data is crucial information that helps marketing agencies tailor their strategies to meet the customers’ and potential customers’ needs. Now you understand why some ads seem tailor-made just for you and no one else in the world.
- Building Stronger Customer Relationships
When customers enjoy personalized experiences, they feel valued. Customers love it when their unique needs are taken into consideration. They fall in love with brands that value them and will likely remain loyal for a long time. Hence, first-data tracking helps businesses to retain customers. Loyal, happy customers are also likely to refer their friends.
- Getting High-quality, More Accurate Data
Second- or third-party data are not as accurate as first-party data. You see, when a business gets these types of data, the authenticity of it cannot always be fully verified. The data may have been tampered with, misrepresented, misinterpreted, or misunderstood to some extent. However, first-party data is highly accurate because the business collects it alone.
The business decides the methodology, storage, interpretation, etc. The data comes directly from the customers with no parties in between, so it will always be accurate and high-quality so long the business applies standard scientific data collection and analysis methods.
- Cost-effective Data Collection
With first-party data tracking, the business directly sees what each customer clicks on its landing pages, how many emails the customer reads, and what they talk about with sales or customer service reps at each touchpoint. It uses this relevant and personalized data to design offers for each customer or potential customer.
The process may be time-consuming, but it is free and much cheaper than second or third-party alternatives that require the business to purchase a tremendous amount of customer data (much of which is sometimes unhelpful), usually at a high price.
- Addresses Customer Privacy Concerns
Customers want to be assured that their data is safe. First-party data addresses this concern because customer data is not transferred to other unrelated entities. By default, second and third-party data tracking involves data sharing between several entities. The level of transparency is shallow in these instances.
Wrapping It Up
First-party data collection is the difference between winning and losing in the competitive world of digital marketing. A business with no strategy to collect, analyze, and work on first-party data has a bleak future. The competition is tough out there.