First Party data: the gold mine in the privacy-first world

Navigating the New Era of Performance Marketing: Building Strategies in a Privacy-First World

A few years ago, Apple changed the game for digital marketers with the introduction of iOS 14.5 and its App Tracking Transparency (ATT) feature. This shift prioritised user privacy by requiring apps to obtain explicit permission before tracking their data across apps and websites. While it’s a win for consumers who value their privacy, it has left many marketers grappling with the challenge of reaching the right audiences without the same rich behavioural data they once had at their fingertips.

If you’ve spent years fine-tuning your PPC and Facebook Ads campaigns, you’re probably familiar with the struggle. Those hyper-targeted remarketing audiences that used to convert like a charm? Suddenly, they’re not performing as they once did, and the strategies that were once reliable feel like they’re fading into thin air. That was the reality for many after this privacy update.

So, where do we go from here? How do we reclaim the precision that we once had when targeting potential customers?

First-Party Data: The Goldmine You Already Own

The answer, my friend, isn’t in some obscure new tool or a hidden hack that circumvents these privacy changes (which is a losing battle, by the way). Instead, it lies in something much closer to home: your first-party data. Think about it—what data do you already have that you might be overlooking?

Let’s break this down. First-party data is information you collect directly from your customers. This isn’t scraped from the web or borrowed from third-party sources. It’s data that you own, and more importantly, it’s data that your audience has willingly shared with you. In a privacy-first world, this is more valuable than ever.

Where to Find Your First-Party Data

Most businesses have a treasure trove of data that’s often underutilised. It’s not just about Google Analytics or email addresses from newsletters. Your data sources are broader than you think. Here are some key places to look:

1. Customer Service and Chat Logs: These are gold mines of customer insights. Conversations your support team has with customers often reveal pain points, desires, and motivations that can guide your messaging and product development. Analyse recurring questions and feedback—this can help you identify the right audiences and tailor your marketing efforts.

2. Sales Team Insights: No one knows your customers better than your sales team. They’re on the front lines, hearing first-hand why people are interested in your product and what objections they might have. Sit down with your sales team, dig into their knowledge, and translate it into targeted messaging that resonates with your potential customers.

3. CRM Data: Your CRM holds invaluable data on past customer interactions, purchase history, and engagement trends. By segmenting this data, you can create highly tailored audiences for your campaigns—think upselling to existing customers or targeting people who haven’t purchased in a while.

4. Email Lists: Email marketing remains one of the strongest channels for reaching your audience, especially when other forms of targeting have become more difficult. Segment your lists based on user behaviour, engagement, or purchase history, and craft highly personalized email campaigns that drive conversions.

5. On-Site Behaviour: Tools like Google Analytics or even your website’s backend data can provide valuable insights into what content is most engaging to users. Where are they spending the most time? What products or pages do they keep returning to? These behaviours give you clues about what drives your audience and can help shape your future campaigns.

6. Surveys and Feedback Forms: Sometimes the best way to understand your customers is to simply ask them. Send out surveys or embed feedback forms on your site to collect direct insights on what your audience is looking for. These responses can help you refine your targeting and even influence product or service development.

Turning Data Into Actionable Insights

Now that you’ve identified your first-party data, the next step is transforming it into actionable insights. Here are a few practical ways to do this:

1. Create Customer Profiles: Pull together the data from different sources (e.g., customer service logs, CRM data, on-site behaviour) to build detailed customer profiles. Understanding who your customers are, what their pain points are, and what motivates them will help you create more accurate targeting strategies, even without third-party data.

2. Refine Your Segmentation: First-party data allows for more precise segmentation. For example, you could create segments based on purchase frequency, customer lifetime value, or engagement level. By crafting campaigns for each specific segment, you can better speak to the needs of each group.

3. Leverage Lookalike Audiences (Intelligently): Although the quality of lookalike audiences has been impacted by privacy restrictions, they can still be effective when seeded with high-quality first-party data. Use your top-performing customer segments to create lookalikes and reach new potential customers who share similar traits.

4. Personalise Messaging: Data from your CRM, sales team, and customer interactions can reveal which messaging resonates best with your audience. Use these insights to craft more relevant and personalised ad copy, landing pages, and email content. The more specific your messaging, the better chance you have of standing out in a crowded marketplace.

Thinking Beyond the Data

Here’s the big takeaway: the era of easily accessible third-party data might be coming to a close, but that doesn’t mean your marketing has to suffer. In fact, this shift gives you the opportunity to build a more genuine and personalised relationship with your audience by tapping into the data you’ve collected directly.

The key is to stop thinking of first-party data as just a set of email addresses or a few CRM entries. Instead, approach it as a living resource that can be analysed, refined, and used creatively to unlock new strategies.

The challenge now is for marketers to think critically about the data they have at their disposal and to make inferences that can guide future marketing strategies. What patterns are emerging in your data? What problems are customers consistently raising, and how can you address them? How can you use what you already know to predict future behaviour and improve targeting?

By focusing on these questions, you’ll not only build more resilient and privacy-friendly marketing strategies but also ensure you’re truly meeting your customers’ needs.

Conclusion: The Data you need is in your hands already

As advertisers, we’ve always had to adapt to change, and this is no different. While Apple’s iOS updates may have initially caused some panic, they also present an opportunity—a chance to rely less on third-party data and more on the insights you’ve built yourself.

Your first-party data is one of the most powerful assets you have. The time has come to dig deep into what you already own—customer service logs, sales team insights, email lists, on-site behaviour—and use this data to fuel your campaigns. By leveraging these resources, you’ll not only regain the precision in targeting you once had but also build a stronger, more transparent relationship with your audience.

So, take a step back and ask yourself: What data do I already have? What can I learn from it? And how can I use these insights to build more meaningful, effective marketing strategies moving forward?

The future of performance marketing is built on the data you own, and the opportunities are endless—if you’re willing to look for them.