May 28, 2026
Zero-party data allows brands to deliver the personalized experiences that customers expect. Here's how to collect it and put it to use.
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Personalization drives sales, but traditional personalization methods only tell part of the story. Zero-party data refers to information customers voluntarily and proactively share about their preferences and needs, making it a high-quality form of consumer data. This data is explicitly provided by customers, ensuring higher accuracy and reliability compared to inferred data from behaviors.
Brands today face a dilemma: they need personalization to compete, yet struggle with data privacy restrictions and consumer distrust of data collection practices. Zero-party data solves this fundamental challenge by providing the rich, accurate consumer insights needed for personalization at scale—all while respecting privacy boundaries.
Brands that collect zero-party data transparently and with clear consent are better positioned to build trust, maintain engagement throughout the customer journey, and create more relevant future experiences. Strong data practices also help reduce unsubscribe rates by ensuring shoppers feel understood rather than over-targeted.
The most successful DTC brands already use interactive quizzes, preference centers, and strategic forms to collect personal details and consumer preferences directly from customers. Brands like Obvi, , and Andie Swim have grown their businesses with this approach—achieving conversion rate increases of up to 296% and ROIs as high as 96X.
This guide explains how to capture zero-party data and turn those insights into personalized experiences that drive remarkable business outcomes.
A strong zero-party data strategy starts with creating experiences that encourage shoppers to willingly share preferences, intentions, and personal context in exchange for more personalized interactions. Brands that successfully collect zero-party data through quizzes, forms, preference centers, and onsite experiences gain access to highly accurate, consent-based insights that improve segmentation, personalization, and customer engagement.
Forrester Research, which coined the term, defines zero-party data as “data that a customer intentionally and proactively shares with a brand,” including preferences, purchase intentions, personal context, and how they want the brand to recognize them.
Let’s compare zero-party data to other data types:
The benefits of prioritizing zero-party data include:
Integrating zero-party data into a customer data platform helps brands collect data more effectively, unify insights across channels, and better understand customer behavior to power more personalized marketing and customer experiences.
First-party data and zero-party data are both incredibly valuable, but they serve different roles in how brands collect data and understand customers.
First-party data comes from observed customer behavior across your own channels: website activity, purchases, email engagement, app usage, and browsing patterns. It shows you what customers are doing in real time.
Zero-party data is information a customer intentionally shares directly with your brand through quizzes, surveys, preference centers, pop-ups, and other interactive experiences. Instead of inferring interests, customers explicitly tell you what they want, need, and prefer.
The strongest personalization strategies combine both. First-party data reveals behavioral patterns, while zero-party data adds context, intent, and preference-driven insights. Together, they help brands create more relevant experiences, stronger segmentation, and more personalized marketing across every touchpoint.
The marketing landscape is shifting quickly as consumer privacy expectations and data regulations continue to evolve. In response, more brands are turning to zero-party data as a more transparent, consent-driven way to better understand customer preferences, intentions, and needs.
Unlike inferred behavioral data, zero-party data is information a customer intentionally shares directly with a brand through quizzes, surveys, preference centers, and interactive experiences. That makes it especially valuable for creating more personalized marketing, product recommendations, and customer journeys built around what shoppers actually want.
Zero-party data also helps improve the customer experience by making interactions feel more relevant and personalized while giving shoppers greater control over how their information is used. At the same time, protecting customer information remains critical. Strong privacy practices and responsible data handling not only support compliance, but also help build long-term trust and stronger customer relationships.
Consumers are more privacy-conscious than ever while expecting personalization from brands. This is what industry experts call the “personalization paradox” – customers want personalized experiences but are unwilling to be tracked.
This is exactly why brands like Obvi switched from Octane AI to Digioh's quiz solution and saw an 80% quiz completion rate (compared to 45% with their previous provider). They prove that customers will share information when they get value in return.
Google’s planned deprecation of third-party cookies in Chrome marks the end of an era for digital marketing. While delayed several times, this change is coming and will fundamentally change how we collect customer data. Third-party data is often collected by data brokers and shared among multiple companies, which can lead to privacy and data quality concerns due to the lack of direct consumer relationships and consent.
Digioh customers utilizing zero-party data strategies are seeing impressive results:
Offering loyalty points as part of a value exchange can encourage customers to share their preferences and zero-party data, further enhancing engagement and trust.
By embracing zero-party data now, ecommerce businesses can build a sustainable competitive advantage and stronger customer relationships like these Digioh customers.
Customer data comes in many forms, and the strongest marketing strategies know how to use each type effectively. Zero-party, first-party, second-party, and third-party data all play different roles in how brands understand and engage customers.
Zero-party data is especially valuable because customers willingly and intentionally share it through quizzes, surveys, preference centers, and interactive experiences. It provides direct insight into preferences, intentions, and personal context. First-party data adds another layer by capturing behavioral signals across owned channels like website activity, purchases, and email engagement. Second-party data comes from trusted partnerships, while third-party data offers broader audience insights at scale.
The most effective brands combine these data sources to create more personalized experiences, stronger segmentation, and more relevant marketing efforts across the customer journey. As privacy expectations and regulations continue to evolve, successful data strategies will depend on transparency, consent, and the ability to turn customer interactions into meaningful experiences that build long-term trust and engagement.
Successfully gathering zero-party data starts with creating value exchanges that make customers genuinely willing to share information. Brands can use customer interactions within their own channels, including websites, quizzes, mobile apps, email, SMS, and social media, to collect insights directly from customers in a more transparent and reliable way.
Here are four effective ways to gather zero-party data that can improve personalization, segmentation, and overall marketing strategy:
Use product recommendation quizzes to guide customers while collecting preference data.
The key is to make quizzes feel like a service not a data collection tool. Focus on helping customers solve problems or find products they’ll love.
Implementation tips:
Let customers control content preferences, product interests, and communication frequency.
By giving customers control over their experience, you're showing respect for their time and collecting valuable targeting data.
Implementation tips:
Capture key customer data through pop-ups triggered at intent-driven moments, such as when a customer signs up or makes their first purchase. This is an ideal opportunity to send a survey or preference collection form to gather zero-party data and enhance personalization.
Bonafide, a women’s health company, does this well. Using Digioh’s interactive forms, they increased their onsite conversion rate to 14.8%—a 469% increase. By focusing on creating value for customers through personalized recommendations, they now generate 6.64% of their total online revenue through these zero-party data collection methods.
Implementation tips:
Zero-party data collection should be continuously optimized through testing:
What works for one brand or customer segment may not work for another. Testing helps you find what works for your unique audience.
A successful zero-party data strategy depends on having the right technology stack to collect, organize, and activate customer insights effectively. Digioh helps ecommerce brands gather valuable insights directly from customers through quizzes, forms, pop-ups, and personalized onsite experiences while also helping brands navigate growing data privacy concerns with more transparent, consent-driven data collection practices.
Digioh’s platform includes:
The platform is designed to make zero-party data activation instant, no technical hurdles between collection and activation.
Leading brands across industries are using zero-party data to create customer experiences that stand out. By powering ecommerce personalization, zero-party data enables brands to deliver relevant, contextual, and seamless shopping journeys across channels, increasing engagement and loyalty. Brands can leverage zero party insights to tailor offerings and enhance customer engagement, ensuring that each interaction is meaningful and personalized.
Personalized Email Campaigns
RANAVAT, a luxury skincare brand, flipped their approach to personalization with Digioh and saw a 294% increase in conversions. Their quizzes collected information about customers' skin types, concerns and goals which powered personalized email programs that delivered tailored recommendations. This not only increased conversions but also generated 3,000 new email subscribers and 16% of their total online revenue.
Whisker, maker of the Litter-Robot, is still seeing success with quizzes as part of their zero-party data strategy. By replacing category browsing with guided selling quizzes they saw a 388% increase in onsite conversions in 30 days. Their quiz collected information about pet owners' specific needs and preferences and created a fully personalized shopping experience. They also saw a 400% increase in email conversions and doubled average order value.
Peak Wellness USA saw 37X ROI with Digioh's interactive guided selling quiz. By collecting zero-party data about customer preferences, health goals and lifestyle factors they were able to create offers that resonated with customers on a personal level. This resulted in a 300% increase in conversions as customers received product recommendations tailored to their needs not generic suggestions.
Customer profiles become far more valuable when brands combine zero-party data with behavioral insights from first-party data. Quizzes, surveys, and preference centers reveal customer intentions, interests, and preferences, while purchase history, website activity, and engagement data add deeper context around actual customer behavior.
Together, these insights create richer customer profiles that support stronger segmentation, more personalized messaging, and more relevant offers across the entire customer journey. Brands can deliver experiences that feel more tailored to individual preferences, improving engagement, customer satisfaction, loyalty, and long-term retention.
Collecting zero-party data is just the beginning. For maximum impact, it’s essential to integrate zero-party data with your overall customer data, ensuring a unified personalization approach across all channels and campaigns. The real value is in activation—turning those insights, including personal preferences gathered through quizzes, surveys, and profile prompts, into tailored experiences across the customer journey. Additionally, using customer feedback mechanisms, such as post-purchase surveys, allows brands to gather insights on customer experiences and satisfaction, informing future personalization efforts and improving the overall customer experience.
Zero-party data allows segmentation based on stated preferences not assumed interests:* Create segments based on product interests
This way you can send messages that speak to customer's needs, not assumptions.
Modern marketing platforms can dynamically change content based on zero-party data:
The most advanced implementations combine zero-party data with real-time behavior for in-the-moment personalization.
Customer support teams with zero-party data can assist better:
Pro tip: Learn how the Digioh x Gorgias integration makes this easy.
Zero-party data programs should be measured on both collection and downstream metrics:
Digioh customer Bedgear saw shoppers become 4.9x more likely to buy and overall conversion rates increased 490% after implementing zero-party data.
As privacy expectations continue to evolve, more brands are shifting away from unreliable third-party data and investing in zero-party data strategies built on transparency and direct customer relationships.
Because zero-party data is willingly shared by customers, it gives brands more accurate insight into preferences, intentions, and interests without relying on guesswork or invasive tracking. That creates stronger personalization, more relevant marketing, and customer experiences that feel more useful and intentional.
Brands that prioritize transparent data collection and consent-driven experiences are also better positioned to build long-term trust and adapt to ongoing changes in privacy regulations, attribution, and consumer expectations.
The shift to zero-party data is a fundamental improvement in how brands understand and serve their customers. Ecommerce merchants can build stronger relationships and better personalization by asking customers about their preferences rather than making assumptions.
To get started:
Ready to see what zero-party data offers can do for your personalization strategy? Request a demo to see how Digioh can help you implement the strategies discussed in this article and start building deeper, more profitable customer relationships through transparent data collection.
Don’t settle for siloed tools. With Digioh, you get one powerful platform for pop-ups, product quizzes, onsite identification, and more—everything you need to personalize every step of the customer journey. Identify more traffic. Collect more zero-party data. Turn insights into revenue.
