How to use first-party data for web personalization
Stay ahead of changes in data regulation and collection with first-party data and create enhanced personalized experiences for your users.
The way organizations collect, manage, and use their data is changing fast. Thanks to recent legislative and consumer behavior changes, savvy marketers are quickly shifting from third-party to first-party data to deliver personalized customer journeys.
After relying too long on third-party data brokers for their personalization, companies have now to reimagine their data collection strategy and get their hands dirty.
Here are a few ideas on how to implement a first-party data personalization strategy for your business.
The death of third-party data
But first, why the urgency?
Until recently, most businesses have relied on third-party data collection (or cookies) for personalization – with social media platforms making up the bulk of that data collection. First-party sources have traditionally been time-consuming and complex to implement, and third-party data marketplaces have filled that gap by offering centralized sources of user data at a low price.
But privacy concerns are now at the top of users' minds who are now reluctant to share personal data, forcing brands to adapt their user data collection strategy and privacy policies.
The largest and most obvious regulatory drive for greater data privacy has been the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) out of the EU. Organizations need to get consent from users for pretty much any data collected.
And major tech companies have responded to ballooning expenses and threats of regulatory fines. The biggest announcement came in 2020 with Google’s promise to phase out third-party cookies within two years. In 2021, they confirmed their commitment.
“We’re making explicit that once third-party cookies are phased out, we will not build alternate identifiers to track individuals as they browse across the web, nor will we use them in our products.”
Other tech giants have also been rolling out similar changes. Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework went live in April 2021 and forced apps running on iOS to ask for user permission to track activity across websites and apps – making it much harder for organizations to create cross-platform personalization.
In the wake of those changes, everybody is now talking about "first-party data".
First-party data and web personalization
What is first-party data?
First-party data is user information an organization collects on its owned channels, not through third-party data brokers.
The organization places code on its apps and websites to track user behaviour like users’ IP addresses, login credentials, browser language, timestamps, demographics, which sites they visited, and items they left in their shopping cart.
For the sake of this discussion, we'll also include zero-party data inside this definition, which consists in information that a user proactively shares with an organization. This could be data from forms, surveys, polls – anything where a user directly shares information with you. This information provides immediate, explicit insights for an organization.
This is the sort of information regulated by laws such as GDPR.
What are the advantages of first-party data?
In a cookieless world, first-party data collection allows organizations to create better-personalized experiences while respecting users' privacy. But other advantages also started to emerge for brands taking this new approach:
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First-party data strategy
Here are some good practices to implement first-party data collection.
How to collect first-party data
When collecting personal information, consider the following sources:
How to aggregate first-party data
Can a CRM be enough to manage your first-party data? Yes and no.
As long as you CRM can integrate seamlessly with another "publishing" platform (CMS, email platform, ad platform, etc), you can implement a web personalization strategy.
Tools like ActiveCampaign can be great for launching personalized email campaigns, but quickly reach a limit when trying to implement an end-to-end web personalization strategy.
Enter the Customer Data Platform (CDP).
What is a Customer Data Platform?
Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) are a type of software that aggregates customer data collected from a variety of sources, including CRMs, Data Management Platforms (DMPs), data lakes or warehouses, websites or mobile apps, and/or POS systems. The data can then be structured into central customer profiles and accessed by other software.
Why use a Customer Data Platform?
Moving to a CDP gives you three main advantages over other alternative solutions.
For example, a user viewing multiple videos of a specific business course on the social media account of a university will be shown a more personalized homepage with a focus on this same course (banner, highlighted course, personalized search suggestions etc) when they finally decide to visit the university website.
Should you move to a CDP?
Yes! If you’re still unsure, some of the core reasons why CDP’s are quickly dominating tech stacks across industries include:
Only a CDP can offer an “out-of-the-box” and easy-to-implement first-data collection and management solution for organizations. They integrate with DXP solutions seamlessly and can cheaply scale with organizations, unlike custom solutions.