How First-Party Data Elevates Your Brand Experience

When used correctly, first-party data allows retailers to thrive on and offline by providing more relevant, personalized, effective ads to users across all marketing channels. But, according to nearly two-thirds of marketing executives, applying these data-driven personalization practices is easier said than done.

Letting first-party data guide your ecommerce strategy enhances your ability to cater directly to customers at the right time and treat them all as individuals with varying needs and personalities. The good news is consumers seem to recognize this, as the overwhelming majority are willing to provide basic personal data for a better brand experience.

Here’s how to make sure the experience you’re providing aces customer expectations and lifts your brand’s online presence.

Using First-Party Data to Lift Sales
It’s tempting for marketers to get carried away with targeting large audiences or demographics without making more careful use of first-party data and personally relevant ads and messaging. While there are certainly times this is more fitting — high-funnel awareness campaigns being the most obvious example — providing a data-driven experience unique to the individual customer should be the primary goal for every ecommerce brand.

The reason is pretty simple: 77% of customers say they will recommend a brand to friends and family if they provide a more personalized experience, and more than half would recommend the company on social media or review sites. Conversely, just one or two poor experiences (including those stemming from spammy, irrelevant, or low-quality ads) result in users switching brands 51% of the time. As you might have guessed, increasing customer loyalty through smart first-party data usage has a demonstrable impact on overall sales lift, particularly for retailers.

Building a Base of More Confident and Loyal Customers

There are still plenty of brands out there tossing ads into the digital ecosystem just to see what sticks. While there’s a time and a place for A/B testing and experimentation, utilizing your existing first-party data to inform marketing decisions will lift your business well above those just playing the numbers game.

An overwhelming amount of findings from a variety of sources agrees first-party data and personalized experiences are critical to success in the ecommerce space. These findings include several useful nuggets, like 70% of consumers saying a company’s understanding of their personal needs influences their loyalty, and 67% of consumers expecting brands to automatically adjust their content based on their current context for a real-time personalized experience.

The link between first-party data utilization and successful personalization practices is undeniable. Personalized homepage promotions, drawn from past user data on the individual level, influenced 85% of consumers to buy, while personalized shopping cart recommendations influenced 92% of shoppers to buy. Unsurprisingly, 86% of marketers experienced a measurable lift in business results after applying first-party data to personalize their campaigns.

Letting the Data Guide Your Strategies Across Channels

Data doesn’t just make it easier to gauge the interest of your audience — it also boosts the relevance of your ads, particularly in cases of dynamic retargeting or abandoned cart campaigns where specific products are placed back in front of qualified users in a favorable context.

These are strategies that can and should be applied across multiple marketing channels to project a consistent, attentive effort on the part of your brand to provide value to each individual consumer. The goal of every brand should be to cultivate healthy long-term relationships with its customers through repeated, positive interactions and to serve as more of a companion to the sales process rather than a shouting billboard providing little personal value.

Though the specific methods of gathering, analyzing, and applying first-party data will likely vary across individual brands and industries, the need for both now, and in the future, is clearly evident. As customers continue to expect personalized value from brands online, in-store, and across devices, access to and proper application of first-party data will be your single most important tool in directing your brand’s ecommerce strategy to new heights.