In this article:
- Zero-party data (ZPD) is becoming increasingly important
Become the best CRMer you can:
CRM Hack: Monitoring the User’s Heartbeat
What Does It Mean to Treat a Customer’s Email With Respect?
To Lock or Not to Lock Customers (into CRM Journeys)
What the Efforts to Promote Responsible Gaming Look Like Form the Inside
As privacy regulations continue to expand, rendering tracking increasingly limited , zero-party data (ZPD) for marketing is on the rise. While brands share both zero-party data and first-party data directly from your customers, the difference is awareness.
First-party data includes information customers passively share, possibly by accepting cookies on the brand’s site or by downloading an app that tracks their behavior. In contrast, zero-party data refers only to what the customer knowingly and willingly/actively shares.
What motivates customers to share their data?
If a brand just asks customers to share personal information, they may not get it. However, if companies ask them one question at a time, and make it clear their responses will lead to a better experience, more personalized offerings, and more relevant recommendations, then customers will more willingly share their data.
Bands that openly ask for ZPD understand what makes their customers tick. They can learn about customers’ goals, concerns, and even specific demographic data points. When brands present questions in an unobtrusive way, as an interactive part of the user experience, and make the value of their questions clear, consumers are more willing to share their information.
Tailored to your taste
ZPD makes sense for any direct to consumer (D2C) brand, particularly when it is sold on the basis of fit. For instance, Men’s clothing retailer Mizzen + Main, designed a very simple quiz for customers to help them find their “best damn dress shirt.”
Mizzen + Main asks questions one at a time, leaving room for responses that aren’t as limiting (i.e. their “in-between” option.
It also asks for your age range and body type, followed by the occasion you have in mind: business dress, business casual, and around town. The fifth step is identifying your style, choice of color, and preferred patterns.
Before customers see the results, the quiz asks for the browser’s email address.
However, shoppers can click a preference to just see the shirts without sharing their email. It also dangles the incentive of a discount on an order.
The next step for the brand here, then, must be to enrich their customer data with all that ZPD, and see the wonders of smart AI-based CRM Marketing journeys at play here. That is, if they have the right technology.
Loyalty is beautiful
Beauty may only be skin deep, but the data behind its marketing goes far deeper. To truly personalize marketing messages, cosmetic brands need to know the target customer’s age, condition, frequency of purchase, and a host of other things. One brand that nailed utilizing customer data is e.l.f.
e.l.f. launched its beauty squad program back in 2016, tying together data from customers purchasing directly from the brand with those who buy from other retailers.
Customers who join the loyalty program earn points for every purchase. For the purchases that take place outside the brand’s own site, they scan in their receipt. That zero-party data updates e.l.f. on not only what they’re buying but where they’re buying it.
To incentivize beauty squad members to share even more, e.l.f. invited its members to join a Facebook page via email.
Group members share their obsession with the brand and some of their makeup looks, and also freely share information – like their name and location – and others even share their age.
Banking on zero-party data
While consumer brands that sell clothing and makeup seem to be a no-brainer for zero-party data collection, it’s also possible to adapt it to the business consumer. For example, the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) offers visitors a series of questions shown in a series rather than all at once.
But the big difference is that while the clothing questions all relate together, the questions from the bank build on each other. It begins with a single question: “What’s your business goal?” with a dropdown menu that shows the following five options:
- Managing my cash flow
- Finding the right loan
- Getting new customers
- Buying or selling a business
- Running a better business
Making a selection like “Getting new customers” leads you to another series of questions to further narrow down the goals.
The customers keep clicking through to answer, getting more and more granular in the responses to find relevant information. Had the customer seen all the choices right on the home page, it would have been overwhelming; The menu is carefully planned to lead the customer through just one question at a time.
It’s the final answers that really tell the bank what the customer is in the market for. That allows for more segmented and tailored further communication, sharing information that’s more relevant than if the brand only had the “I want to get new customers” response.
Then, again, what will make or break these ZPD initiatives is how smartly the brands collecting the data will use it. Enriching their CDP and using the data to scale personalization by creating dozens of micro customer segments, then letting an AI-driven multichannel marketing hub help with the orchestration is how these ZPD plays can lead to better retention, loyalty, and overall customer lifetime value (and, hence, revenue).
But before we even talk about the CRM Marketing uses of ZPD, there’s the collection part, of course. For all the brands that use it, setting up the right way to ask the questions is what will deliver the zero-party data that allows brands to connect with customers effectively and deliver a better, more personalized experience. That’s the key to not just winning sales but fostering loyalty.