The cookie hath crumbled. And with that has come a marketer's need to prioritize their first-party data strategy. Since you’ve likely heard that advice a lot lately we’re giving you some tips to start making that happen...but first a little context.
While the battle behind third-party cookie-ing is a more recent battle, the consumer sentiment on privacy has been accelerating for decades. You may have seen it in your parents or grandparents' hesitancy to adopt using a credit card, online banking system or using a smartphone for fear of putting private information in the wrong hands. Or perhaps you are of age when a paper shredder seemed like the ideal wedding gift so you could shred documents and place them in three separate trash cans with ease (just me?). As consumers we’ve either innately been skeptical of our privacy or taught to be wary of who has access to our personal information. So while concern for how our data is managed and utilized isn’t new, what is new is a) the regulation around how that data is used in a digital ecosystem and b) the consumer understanding around how websites, companies, and digital platforms are capturing their information. Thanks to documentaries like the Social Dilemma and The Great Hack, even the digital novice is somewhat informed that their free platforms usage or harmless web searches aren’t so innocuous after all. This skepticism is important to keep in mind when collecting data of any kind from your user. Because yes, the conversation we’re having is around first-party data but the subtext of the conversation is also, are you building a brand your consumer can trust?
Steps to perfecting your first party strategy
First party data is any data that your company has collected directly from your audience with permission -- made up of customers, site visitors, and social media followers. Hubspot.
Building your data strategy around tools you can trust
How, where, and for how long your data is stored is a regulated channel. The excel docs sitting in various desktop folders within your company may have once seemed like a harmless storage option, but will likely not survive the data security demands legislators and consumers are pushing for. It’s unreasonable to think that everyone on your team will be a data privacy expert, but you should expect that any of your current or future platforms and systems are. Whether it’s your CRM, CDP, marketing automation tool, forms builder, credit card processor, and beyond, any system where consumer information is exchanged and stored should be up to date on current data compliance best practices and future ones as well. Why invest in any tool that is not secure and safe for you to use in the long run?
Actionable next step: take an inventory of all your platforms, review their policies, reach out to your account rep to understand how they are building a system that is compliant with existing privacy laws like GDPR & CCPA, and how they are preparing for future regulation.
Compile your disparate data
This is the big one … the hard work of compiling all the data into one unified customer database. Let’s not oversimplify this either. The idea of a unique data platform is what all publishers have been chasing for years. The project, while vast, can be simplified into a basic concept–compile data from every corner of your business. That means editorial lists, advertising lists, accounting contacts, subscribers, event attendees and your newsletter folks, and so on, should all be living in a cohesive database. Creating a unified database gives you a 360 degree of your consumer making sure you serve your user the right message, in the right context at the right time. For the email channel alone, segmentation increases open rates by up to 29% and click thru rates by 49%. Think about what 49% more eyeballs to your membership offer could do to your conversions. More data → better personalization → more money.
While many of you have likely taken steps toward this, now is the time to compile those last editorial lists that haven’t been migrated into your audience database or excel docs living on individuals' desktops. At the same time, it’s important to set a process so that data doesn’t build up in disparate systems again, and here you find yourselves ten years later, with valuable data left behind.
Actionable next step: Identify all your sources of data and start investigation out of the connections or API’s that would make putting data into your unified database an automated step.
Identify the key metrics to your success
Whether it’s a newsletter you want to launch, membership model, or event, there are likely products where a few key pieces of data (i.e., a newsletter targeted to parents assumes you have intel on whether someone is a parent or not!) are imperative to making the product acquisition strategy successful. Not to mention the key audience members your advertiser is seeking. So, the next step is to identify those high impact metrics. For our city and regional clients, postal code is typically the premier data point, B2B is highly invested in job titles and for our parenting pubs? Number of and age of children. You likely have a pulse on the few pieces of data that are very important to your audience and advertising strategies. Take that information to the next level and rank and identify the 10 most important data points to your business mode in order of importance. As you're identifying these metrics keep in mind a user’s potential sensitivity to the data you’re asking (kids date of birth etc.) If you have a lot of ‘highly sensitive’ data points (because remember, building trust with our consumer is a good first party strategy), think of how you can adopt that data request to something more acceptable. For example, instead of asking your kid’s birthdate, maybe birth month + age range will get you to where you need to be without asking too much of the parent. And if you ask yourself, if it’s too personal for your consumer to want to give, should you be asking for it at all?
Actionable next step: Create your list of key data metrics, and take inventory of how much of that data you contain already. For example, if a job title is highly valuable, query your database to find out what % of your audience you have that data for. This will be helpful in setting a goal for where you want to be at the end of the year.
Set your acquisition strategy
Now that you’ve identified your key data points, it’s time to set up some efforts around backfilling that data. Ideally, you’ve ranked them in priority order so you can get started on the higher priority ones first. Some tried and true ways on getting first-party data:
Survey
A welcome survey for new email or print subscribers
Expired subscriber survey
Reader/expert panel to query your audience for insights beyond general demographic information
New client survey
Giveaways/quizzes
Editorial feature intake - your editorial team has likely covered hundreds of individuals, make sure to include a survey to all your profiled subjects
Get your entire company on board
A strong data strategy is a company initiative. Editors, sales reps, or contractors may be sitting on valuable data from their own surveys or coverage, yet they may not be aware of the impact that data has on your company. Don’t forget your accounting team, who have access to important data on some of your premiere customers. Even if these departments aren’t holding onto data that was gained directly from the consumer, they are likely able to identify opportunities in their own vertical of business that would help you do so in the future. Get aligned.
Actionable next step: Host a 60 minute data meeting with your company and cover how your company currently utilizes data, and how it may be more challenging in the future. Not everyone may know how to interpret the loss of the cookie, take the time to educate them on the value of collecting data and what it could be for your company’s bottom line.
Share your strategy, not your data
Looking back at the context we outlined at the beginning, if we’re also trying to build trust with our customers, we may likely increase our consumers willingness to provide us more information the more transparent we are about it. Be sure to include how you plan to use the data on any surveys or forms. See it as a branding opportunity. Share that you have processes and practices in place to protect their private information and that you take data compliance seriously. A short line in your welcome email or a bullet on your values/missions page could go a long way in strengthening the trust factor in your relationship. Maybe more so than just an onslaught of privacy policy pop-ups that a user is accustomed to encountering (note from our legal team, privacy policies are required, don’t skip out on those even if they are annoying!), but make your commitment to keeping your consumers privacy secure part of your story. Oh, and another way to build a brand worth trusting? Don’t share data without consent, pretty basic principle and some would argue a tenable right.
Did we miss anything? Need help on pulling together any of these? Shoot us an email ashley@twentyfirstdigital.com to get started.
