First-party data is the indispensable ingredient to successfully engaging with your audience. Since first-party data is directly provided to your organization (i.e. there are no intermediaries), gathering first-party data also deepens your relationship with your audience.
Whether you’re transitioning away from third-party cookies or looking for online growth, systematically gathering more first-party data is vital.
Now, what exactly do you need to have in place to gather first-party data? There are two answers to this question: technology and data generation strategies. The right technology is your foundation for gathering first-party data, so we’ll start there.
The Arena Toolkit for First-Party Data
Arena’s products give you powerful ways to gather more first-party data while giving your audience a great experience at the same time. Each of these apps are powerful at helping you to better understand your audience and connect with them more effectively.
1. Arena Live Chat
Image suggestion (this is a placeholder – it would be better to use an Arena Live Chat image)
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Your website is constantly competing for online attention. You’re up against entertainment (e.g. streaming services), communication and community (e.g. social media platforms) and more. All of these distractions to your audience engaging with your website are just one tab away.
One solution is to use Arena Live Chat to give your audience a reason to stay engaged on your website. Instead of visiting a page or two and leaving, a live chat experience keeps people engaged for much longer. As your audience participates in live chat, they’re sharing a variety of first party data points like social reactions, chat comments, votes in polls, and clicks.
From a first party data collection perspective, Live Chat has shown to be one of the most effective methods available today. Community based Live Chat, especially when paired with a live stream event, often gets over 35% of anonymous users to register.
2. Arena Live Blog
News and publishing websites know trending stories draw a lot of attention. However, publishing a single story about a trending development isn’t enough.
Breaking news events are a great opportunity to use a live blog. You can quickly publish short (or long!) updates to cover every angle of a rapidly developing story. Your live blog can include a mix of pre-written content and up to the minute coverage.
A live blog is also an invaluable way to encourage your audience to share first party data. Your audience can interact to your coverage through polls and social reactions. Creating a live blog takes less than a minute which makes it a great choice for news.
3. Arena Personas (Beta)
With live chat and a live blog in place, you’re equipped to give your audience an engaging experience on your website. As your audience grows, you may face a new challenge: managing and using all of the first party data you’ve collected.
Arena Personas is a key part of the solution. It brings all the first party data you’ve collected with Arena and ads context based on actions and intent (Beta).. With all of this data in one place, it’s far easier to create personalized marketing campaigns and support the sales team.
Additional Tools For Your First Party Data Strategy
In addition to Arena, there are several other tools you can use to gather and leverage first party data. Here are some of the most popular options.
4. Email marketing service
Email marketing is one of the most reliable marketing channels around. According to industry research, email marketing generates $42 for every $1 invested in it. For that reason alone, email marketing remains a key priority for many companies.
If you don’t have Arena, you can use tactics like web forms and newsletter signups to facilitate the collection process, however, email engagement & actions should also be a part of your first party data strategy.
When we say engagement and action, we mean the actions (or lack of actions) your subscribers took when you sent the email. Things like email opens, clicks, & view time can all be used to enrich a user profile and trigger next steps for marketing outreach. For example, if you send a monthly newsletter highlighting recent news and product updates, you might analyze the link clicks in the email and follow up specifically with recipients who engaged with content about a new feature, or promotion.
5. Customer relationship management (CRM)
When a CRM is used systematically to track interactions with customers and potential customers, it becomes a rich source of first party data. To better understand the customer journey, look for ways to combine this first party data with other sources like website and chat usage.
6. Live video experiences
Video experiences like conferences, product launches and similar events can yield first
party data. The nuance is that using a third party video platform like YouTube or Facebook may limit the amount of first party data you can collect. For the best results, host the video streaming on your website.
Hosting streaming video through your website is easy when you have the right tools. To find out more, see our post: How to stream video with Vimeo OTT In 7 Steps.
Ways To Capture More First Party Data
Putting all of the right technology in place to gather first party data is necessary, but it’s not enough. You need to give your audience a good reason to come to your website and then keep coming back. Here are a few of the most successful proven strategies that build a connection with your audience and generate useful first party data at the same time.
7. Add a digital element to in-person events
Is event marketing and experiences significant for your business? If the answer is yes, you have a great opportunity to gather more first party data.
For example, you might open up your event’s keynote speaker to a wider audience by livestreaming it on your website. Finally, enrich the experience by including a live chat for your audience to ask questions and share feedback during the event.
8. Shift marketing effort to your website
This way to capture more first party data involves making a strategic change. Look at where and how you are using your marketing budget. If you are dedicating a substantial amount of resources to building a following on social media, there are drawbacks. When your audience interacts with your content on social media, you don’t have a direct relationship so there is no chance to gather first party data.
To maximize your first party efforts, look for ways to use social media and other online platforms to promote your website. To use a movie analogy, it’s smart to share a “trailer” to promote your movie (or other premium content) widely. However, your website will remain the single best way to experience that content.
9. Reward customers for sharing first party data
In recent years, new regulations and laws have compelled brands and publishers to act more transparently in how they gather and use customer data. These efforts can make it more challenging to earn permission to gather first party data from your audience.
The solution isn’t to seek out loopholes or shady tactics to trick your users. Instead, the solution lies in offering value to your customers so that they look forward to engaging with you.
Making it worthwhile for your audience to say yes to your ask for first party data often takes some experimentation. Some in your audience may only respond to traditional incentives like discounts or similar promotions.
Get Started With Arena Today
Putting the right tools in place to gather first party data is essential. To grow your connection with your audience, you need to give people a rewarding experience. Discover how to take back your community from the big social media platforms!
