The fallout from last year’s Cambridge Analytica scandal coupled with privacy regulations sweeping the globe has made it increasingly difficult for marketers to build and maintain trusted relationships with consumers.
One major consequence of the burgeoning new era of privacy was the move away from third-party data sets, previously an important quiver in every B2C marketer’s bow. Fortunately, there is a solution: zero-party data.
“Zero-party data is that which a customer intentionally and proactively shares with a brand. It can include purchase intentions, personal context, and how the individual wants the brand to recognize her.” – Fatemeh Khatibloo, Principal Analyst, Forrester
I sat down with Forrester’s Fatemah Khatibloo to get to the bottom of this class of preference data and how marketers can collect it at scale. Check out the video below:
It is entirely possible for marketers to collect preference data that is intentionally and proactively shared directly with you by the consumer. This is zero-party data.
Marketers collect this data by connecting directly with consumers and gathering the data, insights, and permissions they need to power personalized marketing across all stages of the customer lifecycle.
Rather than inferring, you ask, and if you offer a tantalizing value exchange, consumers will intentionally share the preference data. Data points like purchase intentions and preferences to improve personalization and help build up a picture of who they are.
Zero-party data allows brands to build direct relationships with consumers, and in turn, better personalize their marketing efforts, services, offers, and product recommendations. As it comes directly and willingly from the consumer there are no intermediaries, no guesswork.
Collecting Zero-Party Data At Scale
Marketers can collect zero-party data by delivering interactive experiences that conduct research, accrue opt-ins, and deliver an altogether better experience for the consumer.
Whether a questionnaire, poll, quiz, or social story, by leveraging these interactive experiences that incorporate incentive mechanics, marketers can quickly and easily collect zero-party data at speed and scale.
Capturing consumer motivations, intentions, interests, and preferences at scale lets you truly personalize each customer’s experience. And by leveraging the right mechanics, and offering a value exchange, your customers will tell you what products they desire, what they look for in a service, and what motivates them to purchase.
“Zero-party data is extremely valuable and will improve the effectiveness of your firm’s personalization efforts.” – Fatemeh Khatibloo, Principal Analyst, Forrester
Putting the Theory Into Practice
As the world gets smaller and budget airlines begin to offer long haul destinations, major airlines need a key differentiator other than price. Understanding your customer’s vacation preferences and delivering personalized, wanderlust-inducing recommendations in real-time is the key to rising above the noise.
Air New Zealand’s “You Say Yay” interactive mobile quiz serves to organically promote its flight destinations by asking consumers about their favorite pastimes and offering personalized vacation suggestions in return.
So if a user answered surfing, sunshine, and cocktails they might be served deals to Los Angeles, alternatively, if they submitted craft beer, baseball, and pizza, they may get Chicago.
Additionally, the mobile quiz enables the airline to better understand customers’ preferences and collect valuable zero-party data.
Results
- 38:1 – ROI
- 100k – Zero-party data records collected
