Increase conversions and build trust through consumer-consented data—that is, zero-party, first-party and contact data—effectively.
Amidst inflation and economic slowdown, eCommerce businesses want ways to increase customer loyalty while cutting costs. So how do you do that?
By bringing more value directly to your customers that isn’t dependent on a third-party (e.g., social media platforms), you can build authentic customer relationships while reducing ad spend. And it all begins with gathering and using your own customer data.
When it comes to the third-party data lockdown and zero-party data revolution, we prefer a more all-encompassing term: consumer-consented data. It’s an umbrella term for any data a consumer consents for you to collect. This resource is a broad guide to both collecting and using data to optimize your conversion rates and inform future marketing and business decisions. All through data you own!
Here’s what we’re about to cover:
The terms “zero-party data” and “first-party data” aren’t new, but for simplicity, we like to consolidate these terms under the umbrella of consumer-consented data.
A crystal clear definition for zero-party data: Any personal information a customer consents to give you about themselves. This includes personal preferences and interests shared in a quiz, preference center, survey, or any other form where they provide information about themselves.
A crystal clear definition for first-party data: Any behavior information that a customer consents to give you. This data can include the browsing habits of a customer that comes to your site.
A crystal clear definition for contact data: Any contact information shared directly, which may include things like name, address, phone number, email, geocode, social media handle, etc.
Put them together and you get…Consumer-consented data! Consumer-consented data is anything a customer has consented to give you, full stop.
Why do we use the term consumer-consented data? Honestly, to keep it simple. It’s hard to keep track of all the terms out there: zero-party, first-party, third-party…consumer-consented data is an umbrella term to encompass any data that a customer consents to sharing. It just makes sense!
Let’s look at 6 ways you can collect consumer-consented data, followed by 6 ways you can use it once collected!
The simplest form of customer data is their contact information. Most sites have at least one way to collect this, but here’s a close-to-exhaustive list of every time you may collect customer contact information:
However you decide to collect, make sure you’re always transparent with your customers. Snagging their contact information to automatically subscribe them to your marketing messages without their consent is not the way to build trust. Always include an option for a customer to opt into marketing messages so they know what they’re receiving.
The product recommendation quiz is a gold mine of opportunity for collecting consumer-consented data. Beyond collecting contact information, you get to really get to know your customers. What are they looking for? Who are they shopping for? You can use this data to better market to each individual customer. (we’ll cover that in the next section!)
But more than matching customers with the right product and personalizing their marketing, which in itself drives revenue, the quiz also operates as your undercover researcher. Your quiz questions don't just learn about the individual customer, but your entire customer base. There’s so much you can do for both individual customers and your entire customer base with data collected from a quiz!
Do you have any of the following problems?
What's the missing link? Why aren’t more people buying or staying subscribed? Solve the mystery with a marketing survey! Go straight to your customers to ask them what went wrong and what should change for them to make a purchase. Or ask them to give you a rating with an NPS survey. That allows you to identify who your Promoters and Detractors are and improve your NPS score.
On the other hand, business may be good, but you may wonder:
When collected and used strategically, the answers to these questions can improve your marketing decisions.
Never underestimate the power of a good preference center to retain subscribers. From a business perspective, the more subscribers you retain, the more likely they are to eventually make a purchase; this is good for you. From the subscribers’ perspective, they get to refrain from getting 7 emails a week and customize the messaging they receive; this is great for them.
Your email or SMS preference center can customize frequency, type of messaging, or both. The customer gets to personalize their experience, and you get data insights on who your audience is and what they want. It’s a win-win!
Note: you can create a preference center for email and SMS marketing!
Tying it all together is the multi-step form. Extremely flexible, you can customize a multi-step form to accomplish nearly anything. Here are a few common examples!
What could you create with a multi-step form?
We may not be able to access third-party data (insights on a site visitor’s global browsing history), but we can ask customers to approve cookie collection on our site.
Cookies can collect behavioral information like a visitor’s login status, prior purchases, preferred settings, pages viewed on your site, time spent on a site, and localization data (like language and geolocation). Note that this data is more indirect, gathered from observations, compared to the rest of our examples, provided directly by the visitor.
Tip: Check out #4 in our next section to see how to use this data!
Collecting data is just the first step! Once you own your data, make it work for you. Optimize your conversion rate, personalize your marketing messaging, make bigger decisions about your marketing and products, and more.
Here are 6 ways to use your collected consumer-consented data.
Personalized messaging and marketing offers are more effective than generic ones. A 20% off coupon might be nice, but even nicer is a personalized coupon for the dress they have in their cart currently, or for the product recommended by your quiz.
In addition to dynamic coupons, you can make coupons one-time-use with an expiration date. The one-time use coupon prevents coupon sharing and an expiration date increases the urgency for their purchase.
Email marketing is 72-78% more effective when the business uses audience segmentation and personalized messaging. Without data on your customers, the big question is “How do I personalize my messaging and segment my lists?” But thanks to the consumer-consented data you collected, you know all about your customers and how to market to them individually.
Here are 2 ways to do this:
Once you know what your customers are interested in, you can retarget them across channels. Display your ads in their Google search results, Instagram, Facebook, and anywhere else they go. Remind them of their full cart, show a few options similar to the products they were browsing, or show them a relevant sale.
Creating gorgeous lightboxes, banners, sidebars, and other interactive site experiences is one thing. With thousands of site visitors, how do you ensure each visitor sees the right message at the right time?
It’s all in your custom conditions.
Custom conditions tell your marketing tools when to display what, which is arguably just as important as personalizing the messages themselves. Use your collected data to inform these conditions. Here are a few common errors conditions can help you avoid:
These next two examples take a step back from the individual sale to show how data can influence the bigger picture of your company.
From their product recommendation quiz, our customer JAXXON found that their shoppers were primarily men shopping for themselves. Before this quiz, they thought most of their audience was women shopping for their husband or boyfriend. This insight was extremely impactful to JAXXON, who responded by restructuring their marketing to speak directly to their audience: men shopping for themselves.
“Our new quiz increased our eCommerce conversion rate by 2.2X and completely changed how we market our business.”
Johnii Barbarino
Director of eCommerce, Jaxxon1
Effective marketing begins by speaking to the right audience, and data can help you get there.
When looking at customer data from quizzes or surveys, do you see any holes in your products, offerings, or company as a whole?
As the saying goes, you don’t know what you don’t know. And consumer-consented data collected straight from the source can pull back the curtain, clear the fog, and answer those questions you’ve been asking.
All you have to do is ask and listen.
Consumer-consented data is powerful. And when you collect it yourself, you have what you need to increase conversions, build and retain loyal customers who refer friends, and improve your business as a whole over time.
Hungry for more? Here are a few more resources surrounding collecting data and optimizing conversion rates!
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