First party data is the data that a company collects directly from their customers, site visitors and social media audiences. This set of data is owned by the company and is not purchased from any marketplace or third party vendor. A first-party data strategy is a marketing strategy that is based on the first party data that the company owns and collects.
Marketers cannot rely on third-party data anymore, which is data that is bought from aggregators or captured through the use of third-party cookies. New and increased regulations on digital tracking and cookies such as GDPR, CCPA, IDFA have made it difficult for marketers to collect and use third-party data. Google has also announced that third-party cookies (which make third-party data collection possible) will be phased out in 2023. Now is the time for marketers to define their first-party data strategy and to make use of the data from their audience interactions and engagement to create a personalized customer experience.
The first step is to start working on customer identities and personalizing them by cleaning your data, and then building trust with the customer directly. This will enable the brand to make individual and meaningful connections with the customers on a more human one to one level. Optimizing and personalizing your clean data and interacting with this data will be the very first step in a first-party data strategy. Now that your first-party data is optimized, this means you can get sophisticated with your campaigns, and view analytics with better access to your customer preferences. Using these metrics you can attribute results of your customer experiences to revenue and you can divide your targets into different buying stages.
As a marketer, you need to start registering your visitors. Traditionally marketers have over-relied on third-party data and avoided the process of visitor registrations to their sites. To develop a first-party data strategy, ignoring customer registrations will not be possible anymore. Web analytics are the source to first-party data research. Companies will now have to clean and gather data which is appended to their visitor records This will become essential for marketers to deliver truly personalized experiences.
Marketers also need to invest in analytics tools to gather insights gained through first-party data analysis. These insights can be used to increase the relevancy of the experiences that companies provide for their customers. They can also run experimental campaigns and continuously tie engagement metrics with first-party customer profiles. This strategy can increase the effectiveness of a company’s personalized efforts and campaigns over time.
The overall data strategy is important for building out your customer profiles. First-party data strategy requires the use of technology and tools to put this data to use within an organization. Cookieless solutions can help augment visitor identities and connect it into the digital ecosystem. The technology for cookieless analytics and attribution for enterprise marketing teams is available and results can be achieved without the use of third-party cookies. With a cookieless solution, marketers can still view the entire prospect journey, optimize their marketing efforts and know exactly how marketing drives revenue - all while keeping customer privacy a top priority.
Metricsflow is just the right solution for first-party data analytics and attribution. In a privacy-friendly way, we collect and provide 100% of visitor data cross-platform and cross-device without any cookies. In a non-invasive way, Metricsflow gives you deep insights into your campaign and channel attribution, multi-touch attribution for leads that can be passed directly to your sales team and a complete picture of your marketing efforts. Metricsflow only collects first-party data and will never sell or share data with third-parties and ad networks.