The next step involves focusing on collecting more first-party data. In other words: Instead of relying on third-party information, companies should be able to once again understand and get to know their customer base on the basis of their own data.
This involves using a powerful web analytics tool to track user behaviour and optimise your website.
Above all, it’s about getting visitors and customers to reveal more about themselves. Something that first requires a relationship based on trust. To this end, information needs to be well protected and only used for clearly defined purposes.
Offering certain rewards like competitions, quizzes, gated content, forums, newsletters and events in return often helps. Personalised content and recommendations can likewise incentivise your customer base. Extra tip: Ask for additional information at the right time, like just after a purchase.
As I’ve covered in previous articles; collecting this information alone isn’t enough. It needs to be possible to meaningfully analyse the data. An actively maintained CRM system can be a useful tool in this regard.
In addition, a customer data platform (CPD) helps to merge and prepare data from various sources. It takes care of consolidating customer data, using email addresses to identify people, personalising content and generating visual reports.
In turn, a data clean room aggregates data, after which it can no longer be assigned to individual people, but cohorts. This data can then be shared and collated with data from other providers for a lookalike audience, for example.