In the world of marketing, the term “data” gets thrown around a lot. Most brands are collecting it on a daily basis; however, marketers focused on leveraging robust data for personalization have been most effective. But what is the right data to collect and analyze? Let’s break it down.
The Basics: What is First-Party Data?
First-party data is the information that businesses collect directly from their customers. This typically includes anything submitted during the ordering process, like name, email address, or physical mailing address. Think of it as the gold standard — it’s accurate, reliable, and comes straight from the source.
This data is invaluable because it gives businesses the ability to have a direct line of communication with their customers.
Now Make it Meaningful
Now, imagine taking that first-party data and making it even more powerful. That’s where enrichment comes in.
Enriched first-party data combines the information your customer has provided (like contact information and past purchases) with additional context and insights from external sources. This might include demographic, psychographic, and behavioral information.
Enrichment transforms basic data into a comprehensive, multi-dimensional view of each customer with hundreds of additional attributes. Instead of just knowing that a customer bought a pair of shoes, you also know their age, their household income, if they’ve purchased from other brands like yours, their interests, and more.
Why Enriched First-Party Data Matters in Ecommerce
Better Segmentation
With enriched data, you can segment your audience more easily and effectively. Instead of broad categories, you can segment based on multiple dimensions and on a variety of factors like purchase history, interests, and demographic information. This allows you to find common traits amongst your top value customers for persona identification. It also allows you to leverage these traits in advertising campaigns, helping to improve data-learning models and performance marketing.
Personalized Marketing
Using AI, Decile takes all of that enriched customer data and utilizes it to identify a brand’s top personas. Algorithms work to find common traits amongst customers and groups them together in minutes, making it a much faster and cost effective option than traditional methods of defining brand personas.
Compare personas to further personalize campaigns and speak to the products, copy, creative, and marketing channels that will resonate with each group. With significant data behind your persona definitions, you can rest assured that you’re reaching the right audience with the right messaging at the right time.
Data-Driven Decision Making
With enriched first-party data, your marketing strategies are no longer based on guesswork. You have solid, actionable insights to inform your decisions – from product development to marketing campaigns. This data-driven approach leads to more effective strategies and better ROI. You’re able to not only attract and retain more customers – but able to reach those who are most likely to have a high lifetime value.
Enhanced Acquisition & Retargeting Campaigns
Acquisition and retargeting is more effective when you have a deeper understanding of your customers. Enriched data provides the insights needed to craft compelling retargeting ads that resonate with individual shoppers, driving them back to your site and encouraging repeat purchases. This offers the opportunity to share a discount and feature products that a customer is likely to purchase before they churn – or in win back efforts for customers who have already churned.
Predict Future Outcomes
With a full understanding of your customers, you unlock the benefits of predictive analytics to accurately anticipate how a customer will behave. This includes: the predicted lifetime value of newly acquired customers, what a customer is likely to buy next based on their last purchase, where a customer lies within the lifecycle, and more. These metrics help gauge the effectiveness of campaigns, further improve personalization, and allow you to quickly pivot if needed.
Improved Customer Experience
Understanding your customers on a deeper level enables you to create a more seamless and enjoyable shopping experience. From personalized product recommendations to tailored email campaigns, enriched data helps you meet customer expectations and build loyalty. Additionally, you can leverage demographic and interest data to inform partnerships and strategic ad placements.
Not all Enriched Data is Created Equal
True enrichment goes beyond pixel-based advertising metrics. It offers detailed customer information that has traditionally only been available at a hefty price tag, and therefore only used by brands at the top revenue tiers.
Some marketers think that enriching their data is overly complicated and expensive, but this couldn’t be farther from the truth. Given advancements in technology over the years, platforms like Decile have streamlined data enrichment and made it more accessible for mid-sized merchants.
These capabilities allow for enhanced segmentation, improved personalization, predictive models, better targeting, acquisition and retention of higher LTV customers, and so much more.
Ready to supercharge your identity-based marketing initiatives? Contact Decile to learn more.