by As brands begin to take charge of their data and decrease their dependence on third-party tracking, they have to establish a stronger digital brand identity based on customer trust, relevance, and continuity across multiple digital channels. In order to compete in today’s digital marketplace that is becoming increasingly focused on user privacy, first party data has become crucial to building a successful digital brand strategy.
With the passage of several state-level laws regulating how companies collect and use consumer data and increasing consumer demand for transparency in their interactions with brands, the way in which brands create and implement their digital branding strategies has changed. Digital branding now requires the use of first party data that is collected directly from customers through their interactions with the brand. Brands are not only able to build better relationships with customers through first party data, but also improve the accuracy and long-term performance of digital marketing campaigns.
Personalization, Trust, and Brand Perception
Today’s audiences use personalization to create their own perception of how they view a modern brand’s digital presence, and are looking for brands to deliver messaging, offers, and experiences that align with their actual interests and actions. Using first party data enables brands to deliver personalization without sacrificing user trust.
As competition continues to grow, the ability of brands to grow their business depends on their ability to develop a data strategy that utilizes smarter decision making.
The Growing Importance of Digital Branding in a Privacy-First World
First-party data creates an understanding of audiences through voluntary and transparent subscriber-to-brand interaction and therefore assists in enhancing brands’ trustworthiness while assisting in achieving long-term digital branding goals.
Effects of Branding Trust and Brand Perception
Brand trust is critical to the success of digital branding. According to McKinsey & Company, brands that place an emphasis on data transparency have greater customer loyalty than their competitors. Through first-party data, brands provide greater clarity for users on how their information is being used and therefore build trust.
When brands are transparent about respect for users’ privacy, users are more likely to engage with the brand and provide their preferences, which directly affect the growth of the brand and the milestone of its reputation.
Building a Foundation for Data-Driven Branding
All modern digital branding strategies must include the concept of responsible use of data. Therefore, brands that begin the development of their data-driven branding strategy at the earliest possible date set the foundation to understand how personalization occurs in the future, which is why first-party data is and will continue to be the foundation of branding.
Understanding First Party Data and Its Role in Branding Strategy
What Does First-Party Data Mean?
First-party data is information collected from an organization’s customers, or users, directly by that organization through their mobile or desktop applications or via email and interaction with the organization. First-party data is the only type of data that is considered accurate, consent-based, and owned entirely by the organization that collected it. As Adobe has noted, first-party data is the backbone of any modern digitally driven experience.
First-party data can consist of a variety of differing types of information related to customer behaviour, preferences, previous purchases, and any type of feedback provided to brands.
The Connection Between Data Ownership and Branding Outcomes
The ability to own and control their data supports brands’ abilities to tell a brand story and serve their customers in a more effective manner. Having an effective data strategy enables brands to create branding decisions that are supported by actual data-driven insights, which is the first step in creating a personalised experience for each customer.
How First Party Data Strengthens Personalization in Digital Branding
Relevant Experience With Brands
The effectiveness of digital branding increases dramatically when personalization is based on your actual customer behaviors. Brands can use first-party data to create super-customized messaging content and promotional offers for them based on direct insights into their target audiences. Currently, Netflix is an organization that utilizes a significant amount of owned data through its first-party data source to develop large-scale personalized user experiences.
The continued use of brand-specific personalized experiences will be a support mechanism for sustained growth for the organization.
Removing Clutter Through Improved Engagement
Audience fatigue and decreasing performance will often occur due to generic messaging. A brand can remove the guesswork of trying to guess what your audience is interested in by focusing on verified interests and actions through first-party data. Salesforce reported in a study that the utilization of personalized user experiences positively impacts customer satisfaction.
When your audience feels that your efforts at providing them personalized experiences are supportive instead of intrusive to their lifestyle or digital environment, they will respond more positively to your brand’s digital branding efforts. This level of balance creates greater credibility and trust in the digital branding of a brand.
Long-Term Personalization Strategies
A lack of proper structure results in fragmented, under-utilized data across an organization.
By creating agility between marketing teams and technology teams, brands are able to achieve higher performance with their digital branding efforts in very competitive environments.
Consistency Across Digital Platforms
In terms of brands digitally, they should be uniform across web, social, email, and mobile platforms. Brands can utilise first-party data to learn how their customers interact with them through all platforms. Incentivising, such as, when Meta promotes, provides a singular view for customers, enhancing their customer experience.
Consistent messaging will enable the brand to be more clearly identified and trusted by customers. Creating a clearly connected to the brand image, vice, creating fragmented pieces of the brand, enhances overall brand perception.
Clear Customer Journey Visibility
For brands, the first-party data will help to provide visibility of all customer journeys. Brands will know where their customers engage and drop-off, as well as, where they converted, based on a customer’s data.
Maintaining Uniformity with Relevance
As brands expand, it will become increasingly difficult to maintain uniformity. First-party data offers the ability for brands to scale and personalize a customer’s experience across multiple platforms; thus, making it easier to track brand performance accurately on a larger scale.
Strengthening Audience Segmentation Through First Party Data
Digital Name Branding improves when the brands segment beyond (Demographic) Age & Location.
Using 1st party data from real users to segment based on ‘How’ and ‘When’ they interact with each other; for example, Amazon does this very well. They segment their customers according to the way they browse the site and purchase items.
Brands that utilize Purposeful Segmentation have the ability to provide timely, relevant messages to their customers AND increase consumer engagement while minimizing wasted impressions (i.e., impressions that have no value). Further, Segmentation becomes much more adaptive/flexible.
Scalable Personalization Through Segmentation
Segmentation enables scalable, personalized content at a scale that never overwhelms the brand’s team. Instead of attempting to create/maintain a single segment, brands can dynamically group their audience based on the behavior of their customers and dynamically update these Segments as their customers change.
By having the ability to scale Segmentation, it allows brands to stay relevant as they continue to grow while still retaining a customer focused Digital Name Branding strategy throughout multiple Campaigns.
Building Loyalty and Emotional Connection
Brands that segment well foster loyalty and repeat business from their customers because their customers feel “recognized” versus being generalized as just having a purchase. As a result, a stronger Emotional Connection is created driving Brand Growth and Retention.
Using First Party Data to Support Omnichannel Branding Efforts
Harmony Between Digital and Physical Zones.
Branding online and offline needs to align digitally. First party data connects what happens on a store mobile app or in the store to the website.
Eliminating Friction Across the Touchpoints
Experiences that are inconsistent can create confusion among customers and lead to unclear branding. The use of first party data can allow a brand to see the gaps in the customer journey, which in turn will lead to smoother transitions between the two.
By reducing friction between the touchpoints, the outcome of this transition is that both the customer and the brand will feel satisfied and have a strong chance of continuing their relationship.
Preparing for Growth at Scale
First party data, along with a brand’s Omnichannel branding practices, enables more effective growth. The ability for a brand to control where it goes and what it does will provide the opportunity to build a base on which responsible data governance and compliance will have to be created.
Managing Privacy and Compliance in Digital Branding with First Party Data
The destempos of law causes brands to make responsible use of the data they collect. About half of new internet users will become negative towards brands if they don’t manage their online accounts and data.
Developing trust with consumers develops into a reasonable understanding for the way data will be used. As a result, when consumers view a brand positively, it creates a positive association of the way the brand will continue to treat their information.
Privacy Leadership and Trust
By developing a brand as the “privacy leader,” it builds relationships with existing customers, and attracts new customers. It also gives a company an advantage when there are future changes to privacy regulations. It is important for organizations to continue developing their privacy leadership position even if laws change.
In addition to privacy leadership, organizations should also continuously enhance their knowledge and resources regarding privacy compliance.
Regulatory Frameworks and Responsible Data Use
Beginning with the Consumer Privacy Protection Act (Canada) and The European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), organizations must be aware of the many opportunities to provide value and gain customer trust when implementing responsible data governance.
Companies that embrace privacy will begin to differentiate themselves as leaders by providing positive customer experiences through the ethical use of first party data for ethical personalized experiences without crossing the line.
Organizations will position themselves as leaders within the privacy regulatory landscape, and be better prepared for future developments in the field of data governance.
Leveraging Technology Platforms to Activate First Party Data
Selecting Appropriate Data Platforms
Data collection and activation (via the data you store in your “customer”) for companies’ digital branding activities are reliant on technological solutions/tools that allow for seamless storage and easy use of the first-party data collected by a business.
By using a customer data platform that allows data from multiple sources and interactions to be unified, companies such as Adobe Experience Platform provide businesses a way to employ personalisation based on data in real-time while being able to do this across many customers.
Platforms that perform this function provide the company with a way to ensure data collected remains accurate (it is also more accessible) and that their team of people can react to the way a customer behaves in a timely and effective way to continue to deliver consistent branding to that customer.
Improving the Customer Journey Through Connected Systems
This improves the chances of a brand developing more engagement from its customers and improves their perceptions of the brand.
Enabling the Scalability of Executing a Company’s Brand
Analyzing customer behaviours through first-party data allows companies to use technology as an enabler of executing their brand without sacrificing relevance.
First-party data will remain vital to a brand’s ability to be successful over time as the company grows and expands its campaigns and services into other areas, therefore helping build internal capabilities for long-term success.
Conclusion
As digital branding continues to develop, it is moving into a new phase where ownership, trust, and relevance will define brand success.
Brands with access to first-party data have the power to adapt to a privacy-first world as using first-party data responsibly allows brands to deliver personalized, consistent experiences to their customers and develop stronger connections with their audiences.
Real customer insights allow brands to make better informed decisions, thus enabling them to predict how they will grow.
