First Party Data

First party data refers to information about people that is solicited directly from them as opposed to from somewhere else, such as buying or collecting data from second or third party vendors. Examples of first party data include:

• Data submitted directly in your website or app
• Customer information in your CRM database
• Customer feedback and surveys
• Social media data such as audience demographics, etc.

Since first party data is collected directly from a company’s audience, it is generally more valuable than second or third party data. In addition, since the company collects first party data from their own assets, they own the data outright and can use it to improve their marketing campaigns and customer experience. Second or third party data, on the other hand, may be less accurate, and may come with stipulations about how it may or may not be used.

First party data, however, is still subject to national and international laws around privacy, of course.

There are many use cases of first-party data that marketers can use to improve the ROI of their campaigns, including retargeting, personalization, and more. Due to the high quality of first-party data compared to second and third-party data, there are several valuable marketing use cases. Below are a few of the main applications of first-party data for marketers.

• Retargeting: One of the main use cases for first-party data is retargeting. Since first-party data is collected directly from your own audience, this makes the data much more reliable and accurate for retargeting purposes. Hubspot highlights the value of first-party data for retargeting below:

When it comes to retargeting, first-party data is the best of the best to use, because it’s collected from the people you have the most to learn from — your own audience. That makes the data as reliable as possible for making predictions and forecasting future behavioral trends.

• Predicting behavioral patterns: Another use case for first-party data is predicting a cohort of potential customers’ behavior with a higher degree of confidence. For example, e-commerce companies can predict their audience’s shopping behavior and consumer habits based on previous actions they’ve taken in the online store.
• Audience insights: First-party data can also be incredibly valuable for gaining insights into the audience. This includes audience demographics and intent, and can be used to gain a better understanding of your ideal customer profile.
• Personalized content and advertising: Finally, first-party data can be used to personalize the customer experience through things like serving different content and ads to users based on their previous actions.

In order to take advantage of the benefits of collecting first-party data, marketers need to have a reliable method for aggregating and analyzing data.

Since many digital businesses often have more data than they know what to do with, Singular provides an easy way to glean insights and make use of first party data with marketing analytics, cost aggregation, mobile attribution and more. In particular, below are a few solutions that are relevant to first party data:

• Attribution: Singular helps you understand when you’ve acquired new users or customers organically from your own apps and sites, as well as when you’ve acquired them via paid programs such as advertising.
• In-app monetization: Singular can help you measure and attribute revenue from both in-app purchases as well as ad monetization, helping you both understand your best users and how to target more like them.
• ETL: Singular allows you to export your findings and combine them with your own datasets to generate advanced and predictive insights.

The importance of using first party data to improve the customer experience is highlighted in our article on the subject below:

Taking ownership of a brand’s first-party data is an absolutely critical task for today’s marketer. It is only through collecting and interpreting this information that a brand can take a truly customer-first approach to its customer engagement efforts. And study after study show that there is no better predictor of future customer actions than past customer actions.

In summary, by providing marketing analytics, cost aggregation, and mobile attribution, marketers are able to make use of their first party data and improve the performance of their marketing campaigns.