In its simplest form, first-party data is information collected directly from your customers, such as name, phone, and address. While it’s very essential and valuable to create deeper customer interactions and loyalty experiences, it needs to be augmented with additional data beyond the basic information, such as gender, birthday, product preferences, and behavioral data.

Leveraging augmented or enriched first-party data creates more customized messaging and leads to more long-term customers. Enriched data that can be used to create more customized messaging can be communication preferences, lifestyle attitudes, purchase history, birthday, or life stage (new parents, retirees, etc.). Ways to collect this data are through asking, observing, or appending third-party data.

How to Know What Data to Collect

First, determine what data your organization wants to collect and how you will utilize that data. For example, collect a consumer’s birthday to send birthday communications and special celebratory offers or discounts. Product preferences are also useful for understanding what consumers want to hear about. By understanding the products that are most relevant to customers, you can also offer more relevant product communications that can lead to higher conversions.

Ways to Enrich Data

While there are many ways to ask customers for more data, utilizing a lightboxes at sign up can be one of the most efficient. Add optional fill-in boxes for gender, birthday, or product preference as a customer signs up for a newsletter, rewards, or general communications. Always make sure to highlight the benefit that consumers will receive in exchange for sharing their personal information.

What are Loyalty Experiences?

Knowing more about consumers is how you curate personal moments that enhance customer dialogue and increase loyalty. The experience should be seamless and personalized. Once you gain a full view of consumers, you’ll have a much better idea of when and how to speak to them.

Leveraging Data with Loyalty Experiences:

Loyalty can be offered to the consumer in the form of promotions or incentives, which in turn help to observe purchase or product behavior. Gamification drives engagement and allows brands to identify the types of behaviors that drive repeat visits. Rewards are a big part of what customers think of when they hear loyalty. Status or tiers can be created to reward customers for purchases to reach the next level.

Using first-party data to truly know your customer can develop relevant customer focused experiences and moments. For organizations that have collected more enriched data, constructing a 360-degree view of individual consumers is now more of a reality.