They're Your Customers: Understanding First Party Data

As digital advertisers, there are certain phrases we hear all the time in the course of our work and often we don’t think much about them. It’s important, however, that we take the time to understand these core concepts in order to maximize our effectiveness as digital marketers. One of these phrases is “first party data”, something that many advertisers don’t hear until they come to FieldTest and notice our ability to utilize it. This might be a new phrase for many, but we think it’s one of the most powerful and important tools advertisers have at their disposal to drive brand growth and run effective digital ad campaigns. What is it? How do you use it? And how exactly do you get it? Let’s take a look together! 

What exactly is First Party Data?

In order to explain what first party data is it’s important to understand what it’s counterpart, Third Party Data, is. Third party data is any data collected based on broad purchasing and browsing trends using a broad data set aggregated across multiple sites. Think of it like this: If a consumer shows interest in hot weather, the beach, and staying hydrated, a third party data provider can take those trends and make the (most likely accurate) assumption that they are a good candidate for your seltzer water brand. None of this data comes from one specific source, it is the result of an aggregate of information pooled together to paint a broad picture of a cohort of online consumers. This is one of the most commonly used data types in digital marketing and if you are reading this there is a good chance you are already using it. Facebook, Google, etc all use third party data sources to create these segments of likely purchasers. Even FieldTest uses third party data segments, with hundreds of thousands at your disposal within our platform. 

First party data works similarly, but it comes directly from a single source. If third party data has to put a handful of consumer trend puzzle pieces together to see the full picture of a beverage consumer, first party data is the information that they have purchased your beverage and will likely want to come back for more. This is a much more accurate picture of consumer behavior, the fact that it comes directly from a single course means it doesn’t not need to make as many assumptions to tie the consumer to that source. This makes first party data an extremely powerful tool for digital marketing. Once you get your hands on some first party data you are in a good position not only to market to those intenders who you know for a fact are interested in your product, but you also have the ability to create even more accurate Lookalike Audiences in the FieldTest platform, giving you a serious head start over advertisers who only work with third party data segments.

So how do I get First Party Data?

If first party data sounds too good to be true and you’re waiting for the catch, there is one but it’s not insurmountable. Typically first party data is collected using data pulled directly from your website using a tracking pixel. Every advertiser on FieldTest gets issued one of these tracking pixels and as soon as it gets deployed on your website it begins collecting this first party data for use in your campaigns. However, and this is the catch, it needs a pretty sizeable amount of traffic in order to draw any real conclusions about who your consumers really are. Once you have the pixel implemented you can immediately begin retargeting site visitors with winback ads, but you will not be able to use this data to expand your reach until you reach several thousand hits on your website. This presents a problem for newer brands who are still building their footprint and still struggling to win the type of traffic more established brands enjoy. This is not as bad as it sounds, however, and there are ways you can establish a solid first party data set without established traffic. 

One way is to simply create awareness level marketing campaigns using broad targeting and solid funding in order to drive traffic to your site. By doing this you create the organic traffic growth that eventually leads to the type of dataset that drives effective first party data campaigns. Another is to use data from your social media campaigns to give yourself a head start towards first party data independence. Most social platforms will allow you to export your purchaser data, this can be imported into your FieldTest campaigns to create custom audiences and start you towards having a solid basis for your LALs.

Yet another way for brands who do not quite have their site traffic locked down yet to get a good first party data foundation is to create an email signup form and provide FieldTest with any email lists you gather from it. Our ability to implement email lists into your campaigns means that any brand, big or small, can come to us and almost immediately have a solid first party dataset to build lookalikes around. Any bit of data you can provide us helps us put together an accurate picture of your consumers so you can not only target them more effectively, but also target other consumers with similar purchasing patterns.

Many brands starting from the ground up know how much of a challenge it can be to collect the level of data needed to effectively create lookalikes. If none of those options sounds feasible that’s ok, you still have other options! Several data providers have begun to provide first party data segments directly to consumers and FieldTest has partnered with many of them in order to give you access to the fullest dataset available online. Simply search for audiegent audiences in the FieldTest platform to discover relevant first party data segments from some of the top brands online, all available for use in your campaigns. These can provide an essential boost to your marketing campaigns, and they're only available on the FieldTest platform. 

We’ve said over and over again that first party data is one of the most powerful tools advertisers have at their disposal to effectively target their consumers, and we mean it. By getting a direct look at your own purchasers and browsers you get the most clear picture of who they are and how you can effectively market to them. Third party data may help you reach new audiences you never expected, but first party data will always give you the clearest understanding of your customers.

Get in touch to find out how FieldTest can help you build and utilize your first party dataset