Zero Party Data: Creating Trustworthy and Effective Campaigns
As online users become increasingly privacy-centric and more averse to unsanctioned, unsolicited marketing offers and communications, the digital data landscape is rapidly evolving, and this is impacting the type of consumer data that businesses are collecting and using.
Along with evolving privacy laws and increasing customer demand for highly personalized marketing campaigns, organizations have turned to zero-party data to power their marketing efforts.
Let’s dive into why third-party data is no longer a viable source for valuable customer insights and how zero-party data is more than a replacement – it’s a better long-term solution for growth-minded marketers.
What is zero-party data?
Zero-party data is information that a customer actively and intentionally shares with a brand. This is according to Forrester’s definition of zero-party data. In essence, a business collects zero-party data directly from a customer in exchange for something in return. Types of data can include (but are not limited to) personal information, personal preference data, purchase histories, and purchase intentions and interests.
Zero-party data can be collected from a variety of sources, including:
- Online surveys
- Customer sign-up and registration forms
- Loyalty programs
- Ranking and rating buttons/sliders
- Interactive Q and As and other tools
- Quizzes
- Transactional data
The differences between first, second, and third-party data
If zero-party data is handed over to businesses from consumers, how does it differ from all other already existing data forms? As it turns out, quite a lot. Let’s take a closer look at the key differences between zero, first, second, and third-party data.
Zero-party data:
- Willingly and actively provided to businesses by customers
- Comes from a direct relationship between brands and customers
- High level of accuracy and reliability
- Not shared
First-party data:
- Passively collected by retailers and businesses from customers via websites, apps, social media platforms, and services.
- Mostly online customer behavior including clicks, hovering, scrolling, and other session information
- Comes from a direct relationship between brands and customers
- High level of accuracy and reliability
- Not shared
Second-party data:
- Not directly collected by a company, but purchased from another company that has collected it via its own channels
- Includes behavioral, transactional, and personal data collected passively from customers as part of their personalization data mix
- No direct relationship between the purchasing company and the customers
- High level of accuracy and reliability
- Shared only with trusted partners
Third-party data:
- Aggregated data that is collected from multiple sources and sold by a company that did not collect the data
- Often sold on a data exchange platform
- Includes personal, behavioral, and transactional data
- No direct relationship between the purchasing company, the collecting company, and the customers
- Data is often collected and sold without customers’ awareness and/or consent
- Low level of accuracy and reliability
- Shared with many companies
Why is zero-party data becoming so important in marketing?
Zero-party data is becoming increasingly central to successful marketing due to the implicit customer trust and agency behind its exchange. Unlike first-party, second-party, and third-party data, zero-party data is actively shared by consumers who are aware of and consent to their data being used to tailor and improve their customer experience.
In the past, companies could rely on third-party data to help design their marketing strategies, but this is no longer the case. With consumers becoming less patient with businesses that collect data without their consent and more willing to cut ties with brands that utilize third-party data, many businesses like Google and Apple have openly abandoned their efforts to use it.
Stringent privacy laws like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act are also making it more difficult for consumer data to be collected and resold by third-party agencies.
The benefits of zero-party data for your business
Being on the right side of consumer privacy laws coupled with the fact that it comes directly from your target market, zero-party data is a powerful business asset that can help you craft better marketing campaigns and more personalized experiences with customers compared to third-party data. Here’s a breakdown of the benefits that zero-party data can bring to your marketing and communications efforts.
Greater accuracy
Zero-party data comes straight from your customers with no delays, lags, or multiple rounds of aggregations, giving it far greater accuracy. It hasn’t been collected from numerous systems like a customer data platform, or reproduced and repurposed for differing buyers, which often results in data losing key metadata or context that gives it value.
More trustworthy
Again, due to it being shared directly from customers, businesses can regard zero-party data as being more honest and trustworthy than third-party data. Because customers know their data is being collected in exchange for something in return, the motivation of reward is more likely to produce more honest answers that will help both businesses and consumers in the long run.
No need for assumptions or guesses
When it comes to data collected passively via first or second-party data, there’s still a certain degree of assumption and guesswork that needs to take place when analyzing it.
For instance, just because a customer clicked on a link that leads to a page selling tennis racquets, that’s no guarantee the customer wants to buy one or is even interested in tennis (they may have been looking for a gift for a friend). Zero-party data is the only data source that provides concrete certainty about a consumer’s habits, preferences, and other information.
Enables greater personalization
More accurate, trustworthy data naturally makes personalizing content easier and more effective in all customer marketing, communications, and product recommendations. Greater personalization helps with targeting smaller, more concentrated customer segments.
This makes it all the more likely for businesses and marketers to find success in their marketing campaigns, including more lead generation, conversion rates, and overall sales.
Invisibly: Pairing zero-party data with the right partners
Getting access to the data you need to craft compelling, effective marketing campaigns and offerings can be time-consuming. With Invisibly, we’ve made it easy. We’re committed to building a more ethical digital ecosystem where everyone benefits from actively consented data sharing.
We collect high-value, premium zero-party data from our users, with complete transparency. Users who sign up to our platform earn points by choosing to share data via online surveys or sharing their shopping history, in exchange for rewards they can redeem at our vast network of retail partners.
Get access to the data your organization needs by signing up with Invisibly.
Invisibly
See your data work for you.