The introduction of privacy laws such as GDPR in recent years have had an impact on how we all collect and use data to market to consumers in the Digital world. As a result, zero-party data has become more important than ever. But what is zero-party data, how does it differ from other types of data you currently hold on your customers and what are the benefits of zero-party data?

What Is Zero-Party Data?

Zero-party data is any data that a user or customer intentionally shares with you. The customer is actively and knowingly involved in sharing their data with you. This could be related to the customer’s interests, preferences, what they are looking to purchase or even how the user wishes to be recognised by your brand.

So how does this differ from first-party data? The crucial aspect of zero-party data is that the data is directly collected from the user rather than being inferred by the company, whereas first-party data is assumed based on how the user navigates your website or interacts with your brand.

Think of it like a customer telling you directly that they are interested in buying a coat, rather than you assuming that they are interested in buying a coat because they looked at one on your website.

Why Is Zero-Party Data Important?

Companies often use Web Analytics tools such as Adobe or Google Analytics to monitor the actions that users complete on their websites or data gathered from third parties to build segments for personalisation and targeting of customers. Whilst this is great for larger-scale personalisation, the reliability of the data can be an issue due to limitations with third-party data and several assumptions that are made about the user. Zero-party data removes these concerns from the picture, meaning your personalisation and targeting campaigns are more closely aligned with the user’s true needs and desires.

Another benefit of zero-party data is that it does not rely on data collection via cookies in the same way that third-party data does. Given that third-party cookies are being phased out by the likes of Google and Apple over the next few years, collecting your own data about your customers is becoming more crucial than ever. It must, however, be remembered that consent from your customers is still required to capture zero-party data.

Once you start building a collection of zero-party data, you can use it for more personalised marketing campaigns and customer journeys, to improve customer experiences and to better understand your customers’ needs.

As a by-product of eCommerce brands learning about what their customers are interested in purchasing, zero-party data can aid with making decisions on what products should be listed on your site and help with stock management through better forecasting of customer demand in the future.

How to Capture Zero-Party Data

How do you go about capturing zero-party data then? Given it requires customers to actively share this data with you, contact of some form is required with the user. This can come from a variety of methods, with some options including:

• Polls or surveys
• Online registrations for webinars or events
• Quizzes
• Online tests
• Competitions

The data points you may wish to collect should be specific to your business and the products or services you offer to allow you to tailor your messaging and content to your customers. For example, an online clothes retailer may choose to run a survey on their site asking customers questions such as:

• What shoe size do you typically wear?
• Are you interested in clothing made from sustainable materials?
• What are your favourite colours to wear?
• How often do you purchase new clothes?

Provided that you know who the customer is that is answering the survey, either through them being authenticated on your website or from a unique email link to the survey for example, you can tie the zero-party data captured back to the profile of the customer that you hold for future use.

Final Thoughts

As always, it is important to be transparent with users about the data you are capturing and how it might be used in the future. However, capturing zero-party data can help build trust with your customers and help you better understand their needs.

With third-party data sources becoming less valuable over time due to new privacy laws, zero-party data will continue to become more valuable to businesses that are looking to understand their customers and maximise their marketing effectiveness. The more zero-party data you capture, the more opportunities you will have to use it in personalisation and targeting activity. In addition, if you have a CDP (Customer Data Platform) in place, you can ingest the data you capture from forms, quizzes and polls into your CDP to strengthen your existing customer profiles.

Whilst on the face of it, zero-party data may not seem to be too different from first-party data, the subtle difference that the customer is explicitly informing you of their intentions and preferences means the data is more accurate and reliable. As a result, the communications and content you provide to your customers can be more specific to them, which can help create a stronger bond with your brand.