First Party Data: A Beginner’s Guide

Having a First Party Data strategy is becoming more and more important in today’s landscape, but you may be starting from scratch and don’t have a clear understanding what it is and why you need it. This guide will go over First Party Data for our beginners so you have a fast and effective way to get started!

What Is First Party Data?

Everyone is abuzz about the importance of First Party Data, but what is it, really? First Party Data is information that you collect directly from your audience. So this is data that you have not received from another business or third party– your audience supplied this data directly to you.

As an example, you can collect First Party Data by running a promotion in which users have to fill out a registration form to participate. In that registration form, you have the ability ask users to provide demographic information, opinions about your organization, lead generation information for your sponsors, etc. All of the information your users provide from that registration form is considered Frist Party Data because the user submitted it directly to you.

Another important thing to keep in mind – along with collecting First Party Data – is to collect explicit permission to contact those users who provide you with their data. This can be done by including an opt-in on your registration form. As a note – make sure your opt-in is NOT pre-checked. This makes sure users explicitly take an action to opt-in and show interest in receiving communication. When you include an opt-in, this then allows you to collect all of that necessary First Party Data and make it actionable, giving you the ability to now also contact those users with information about your organization, your sponsor, etc.

Why Is It Important?

There are huge, measurable benefits to collecting First Party Data, but one of the biggest benefits is that this data is acquired directly from your audience – there is no separation between you and the data source – meaning the quality of the data is arguably the highest it could be.

Also, it is cost effective for you to collect this data directly from your audience, rather paying a third party for this information. And speaking of cost – you can easily turn around and use this data to drive big revenue for both you and your advertisers/sponsors.

It’s also been noted that broadcasters could see large revenue losses if they don’t implement First Party Data strategies soon, so now is the time to act! According to NAB PILOT, with the deprecation of third party cookies, and a First Party Data strategy is imperative in order to prevent revenue loss and to easily utilize and leverage your current audiences. Overall, the sentiment is you need to get started and DO SOMETHING to start collecting First Party Data from your audiences.

How Do You Use It?

You’ve now collected all of this valuable data – so what do you do with it? This is where segmentation and targeting come into play. The First Party Data you collect can be used to thoroughly segment your audiences to better define and personalize your content, drive conversions, and better align your customer journey to increase subscription revenue.

For example, you’ve run a promotion in which you’ve collected location data, like zip codes. You can now segment your audience by zip code to alert users within a certain grouping of zip codes that a new location of one of your sponsor’s is opening in their area.

Or, you’ve collected age and gender information from your audience. This now allows you to target specific age or gender ranges in your marketing outreach so, for example, your younger audience doesn’t receive information about your retirement sponsor, and that outreach targets the demographic that would most benefit from it.

Check out more about ways you can segment your audiences here!

The Bottom Line

First Party Data is an absolute necessity for you to not only understand, but more effectively engage with your audience, and therefore more successfully drive revenue. Utilizing promotions is a simple, easy, and captivating way to gather this highly valuable information from your audience!