First Party Data – Why Your Own Customer Data is the North Star of Your Digital Marketing Strategy

Okay, let's chat about something super important in digital marketing: first-party data.

Imagine your business is a big puzzle. For a long time, marketers used borrowed puzzle pieces (called "third-party data") to try and guess what the full picture looked like. But those pieces were often blurry or didn't quite fit.

As a business you also do not have insight into how third party data was obtained which could have negative business impacts.

First-party data is different. It's the information you collect directly from users that engage with your business such as:

• What they do on your website (what they click, what they buy).

• What they do on your website (what they What they tell you in surveys or sign-up forms).

• How they interact with your emails or app.

  
  

This data is gold because it's accurate, reliable, and it's YOURS. You know exactly where it came from and how it is relevant to your business so there's no guesswork involved.

So why does this matter? Well, relying on this direct feedback lets you:

• Personalize: Instead of generic ads, you can show people exactly what they're interested in. If someone looked at green shorts, show them green shorts! According to Google. studies show that using first-party data for marketing can lead to a 2.9X revenue uplift and 1.5X cost savings for businesses.

• Build trust & loyalty: When you use data ethically, transparently (by asking permission!) and offer customers value in exchange for information, you build better relationships with your customers and drive loyalty.

• Lifetime Value: This is where the magic really happens for your entire business, not just your marketing team. By bringing together data from all your different customer touchpoints (first click on an ad > website visit > purchase > to their customer service query), you gain a truly holistic understanding of their entire journey. But why does it matter?

  • Instead of just focusing on that first sale, first-party data helps you identify your most valuable customers and understand what keeps them coming back.

  • It also helps better predict outcomes from your acquisition efforts. As your teams will be able to determine whether an acquisition marketing effort is truly worth the investment by comparing cost of acquiring a new customer to expected lifetime value of a new customer.

    • This means you can tailor your marketing and retention efforts to nurture long-term relationships, knowing that a customer's true worth often extends far beyond their initial purchase.

In a world where privacy is evolving and data is turning into the most valuable commodity on planet earth, making first-party data the heart of your digital marketing isn't just smart, it's essential for long-term success. It's time to orbit around your own customer data!