First-party data is a vital element of digital marketing and is set to play an increasingly important role. If your business has yet to establish systems to collect and leverage this data, now is the time to act.
What is First-Party Data?
First-party data is information collected directly from your audiences. Common examples include analytics data captured from website visitors and your CRM data. This differs from third-party data you can’t directly access such as cookie-based advertising segments with Google or Meta.
Third-Party Data Deprecation
With privacy concerns and data regulations increasing in recent years, top digital ad platforms have considered migrating from the third-party cookies currently used to target most shoppers. This data would likely be replaced by a comparable methodology though advertisers are rightfully skeptical of the targeting precision of the alternatives.
Where to Gather First-Party Data
First-party data can be accumulated rather easily. Google Analytics can capture website visitor data that is convertible into remarketing lists. As your organization’s privacy policy allows, you can also repurpose data from forms submitted on your website, CRM databases, and your email provider. However, ensure these lists are well-maintained to ensure contacts’ data remains accurate.
First-Party Data Uses
First-party data will become more crucial to Google Ads and social media advertising as other data types become limited. In the meantime, first-party data has valuable uses in reaching your owned audiences directly or supplementing existing third-party ad targeting.
Owned data is core to remarketing, enabling advertising exclusively to recent website visitors. Additional parameters can narrow this list based on behavioral data, including if users didn’t convert during their visit. Also, consider incorporating contact lists from other sources such as your CRM to ad platforms as “custom audiences” that can be precisely targeted by your campaigns.
Lookalike audiences can also be created from first-party data to target shoppers who share similar characteristics to your customers. These user segments are typically more likely to convert than generalized audiences and are poised to play a larger role in the future.
Experiment with layering owned audiences over third-party targeting in your advertising. You can use audience combinations to refine your targeting, including first-party exclusions to negate ad spend towards users who’ve already converted into customers from another marketing channel.
Summary
Effective leveraging of first-party data can pay dividends immediately and as third-party data becomes more limited in the future. Ensure you’re collecting available data from those who interact with your brand, and be aware of opportunities to utilize owned data to reach your ideal customers.
