Build a unified customer identity with first-party data

 Before starting this blog, we would like you to answer two questions.

●    Do you need a customer data platform (CDP) for gathering first-party data?

●    The second thing- does a CDP need first-party data to build a unified customer view?

Well, the answer is yes- for both questions. Creating a unified customer identity is dependent on the consistency and quality of first-party data.

While tags have done a fairly good job in collecting first-party data for CDPs, things have been tricky off-late with browser restrictions. 

Strict privacy compliance, lack of paid media attributions, and inconsistency due to siloed data have led to many issues for marketers and data analysts.

Fortunately, server-side tagging has provided data analysts with many legal and ethical techniques. They can generate first-party data and build a unified customer identity using them. 

Challenges of Using First-party Data for Customer Identity

While there are several methods for third-party data collection, they may or may not fulfil marketing needs. Some of the common challenges faced by marketers include:

1. Data from Dissimilar Sources

Every source can deliver its first party data. However, if you work with demand-side platforms, the formats will be unique to the platform. Thus, with third-party cookies, these platforms will fail to gather accurate data about customers.

2. Assigning Data Points to Customers

Inaccurate data is another challenge for marketers. The data points collected across different marketing sources and channels cannot be tracked back to the original customer, and this happens due to a lack of customer identity.

3. No Website or App sign-in Behavior

If a user has not signed in with client-side tagging, there is no way can you can track the user's activity. You cannot assign it to a specific customer and explore this behavior before and after signing in. For this, they need a unique customer identity.

Types of First-party Data Sets

The first-party data you collect from your audience includes:

1. Goal Conversions

This can be a part of the buyer journey and can be tracked from the landing page to the payment portal. It will include the channels that are being used to discover your website and what is the most engaging component of your website.

2. Customer Relationship Management

The data you have in your CRM via cold calling, chat, form submissions, and queries are also counted as first-party data. It is updated regularly, and you also get timely inputs from the CRM platform.

 3. Subscription Data

Another source of first-party data is the prospects converted as customers, their preferred plans and the willingness to purchase.

4. Social Data

Social media is also a great source of data. Whenever customers sign up for campaigns, participate in a poll, or join your network, you can use them to derive insights and refine your database.

5. Offline Data Sets

These include offline interactions and information such as surveys, customer feedback, and other information stored in your CRM database.

How to Use First-party Data To Build Customer Identity?

First-party data collection is directly proportional to return on investment (ROI) and can increase the lifetime value (LTV). It will provide the correct view of your customer's behavior and preferences over time.

With Magic Pixel, whenever you receive data from a demand-side platform, an ID will be assigned to the email registered during the campaign.

The same ID is stored and tracked back to other users' activities detected on the mobile app, website, and other marketing interactions sources.

The ID created by demand-side platforms will also be assigned back to users. This happens when there is a blend of unique IDs and first-party cookie-based identifiers.

Unified ID is generated by hashing the email address and assigning it to the unique Magic Pixel ID for deduplication and bidding on public sites. This process is carried out with user consent to maintain customer identity.

Magic Pixel ID is quite similar to first-party domain-based identity systems. These IDs are rendered from your domain and hold the key to consented first-party data about the customer and thus belong to your brand.

Wrapping Up

When Magic Pixel ID becomes the primary ID for all your customers, you can easily try disparate identities assigned as FB ID and Google ID every time a tag is fired for the visitor.

You can further align it with your dynamic creative optimization module for enriching audience segments. This will be based on the signals, features, and traits collected about the users. Moreover, you will be able to integrate the same information and serve customers in a personalized manner.

So, leverage the power of unified customer identities with first data by scheduling a demo with us! We would love to know your concerns and help you out in every possible way.