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With commerce sales rising, the big question is whether you are able to capture your first-party customer data from this unprecedented opportunity.
What is First-Party Data?
First-party data is a rich resource. It is defined as customer information supplied by your customers. There have been multiple studies, surveys, and research showing that first-party data is superior to third-party data obtained by cookies. It is of higher quality, more accurate, and extremely relevant as it is direct from the source and involves only your consumers, products, and brands.
One of the primary benefits is that it is proprietary. Your first-party customer data is yours, alone. There is no vendor making this data available to you and your competitors via cookie tracking. It is gathered by Shoppable® with shopper consent to fulfill an ecommerce transaction either from a site, online ad, or social media channel. This is key for your consumers concerned about their privacy as well as the adaptation of new privacy-focused legislation (such as GDPR and CCPA) and the demise of third-party cookies on Google, by the end of this year.
Having good data stewardship is an important factor in building consumer trust in your brand that can result in increasing your revenue.
As this Boston Consulting Group article shares, “In the past year or two, privacy concerns and regulatory changes have increased the importance of first-party data, which helps companies keep value and trust at the center of the customer relationship by providing a transparent response to consumer and regulatory concerns. In addition, our research has shown that companies that link all of their first-party data sources can generate 1.5 times the incremental revenue from a single ad placement, communication, or outreach, and double the improvement in cost efficiency over companies that have more limited data integration capabilities.”
How to Obtain Your First-Party Data?
Many major brands, especially in consumer goods, unfortunately, do not have first-hand customer contact. They may be forced to rely upon retailers and other parties to provide their customer information. Manufacturers that utilize affiliate “link-off” providers, for example, especially hit a wall, as no data is gathered once the consumer hits the “buy” button.
Shoppable’s patented Universal Checkout (featured in all of Shoppable’s products, including those for embeddable commerce, shoppable ads, and social commerce) is unique in its ability to provide your full and complete first-party data.
This includes everything that happens after the “buy” button. In addition to the expected contact and shipping information, there is a wealth of shopper behavior analytics compiled on your Shoppable® dashboard. From traffic sources to clicks, items in a cart, actual checkout, and your real purchase details–everything that occurs up to the “thank you” email (which Shoppable® allows you to customize to your brand) that concludes an online purchase. See this listing of the stats that are compiled for the Shoppable® dashboard via the collection of your first-party customer data:
Shoppable® Dashboard Analytics
Stat Type Explanation of Stat
Add to Cart Rate Rate is Add to Cart divided by Shoppable's Total Sessions
Average Order AOV of both completed and canceled orders
Average Time Displays the average amount of time that visitors spend on a page of your site
Bounce Rate Single-page sessions divided by all sessions
Campaign Revenue Revenue generated by named campaigns tracked by GA through UTM codes
Cart Abandonment Add an item to the cart, but leave before checking out
Checkout Abandonment Users that start the checkout process, but do not complete it
Conversion Rate Total completed and canceled orders divided by product views
Device Usage Mobile vs tablet vs desktop
Gender Usage Sessions based on shopper gender
No Cart Addition Users that view at least one product but no addition to cart
No Shopping Activity Churn Rate - users that leave sessions w/o clicking on a product landing page
Opt-ins All orders captured via checkouts
Order Analysis Breakdown of completed versus canceled orders
Product Views Number of times users viewed the product-detail page
Revenue by State Total completed and canceled shipping revenue by state
Revenue per Month Total revenue and quantity for completed orders (GMV)
Shopper Intent ATC YTD divided by Prod Views x 100
Top 5 Products Top 5 selling products by quantity
Top 5 Retailers Add to Cart and product checkout results by retailer in GA
Top Traffic Sources Top traffic sources with revenues over $0
Total Orders Total completed and canceled
Total Revenue Total revenue based on completed orders
Total Sessions All interactions with the shopping cart
User Age Analysis Sessions based on shopper age
User Analysis New vs returning users
Here is all the data necessary to better understand your customers. You’ll have the information to attract and retain them, develop audience segmentation, and offer loyalty programs and personalization. You’ll be able to measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns, test and experiment, and optimize your overall customer experience as well as future sales outreach.
How Does First-Party Data Insight Propel Your CRM?
At the most basic levels, to grow your market share, you’ll want to distinguish between new and repeat customers. Other priorities are to prevent churn, have the ability to remarket, spot trends, and take advantage of new technologies such as using AI for automation, predictive audience modeling, and to personalize your ad creative.
Having better quality data means having greater capabilities.
You’re able to not only connect with your actual buyers, but also not waste time on those segments that are not your best targets, concentrating on the look-alike audiences that match your highest value customers.
First-party customer data gives you the analytics to respond quickly to product lines that suddenly experience a growth spurt, or slow down. You’ll have a front row seat to supply chain issues, which retailers are your customer’s preferred online vendors, and all the demographic information about your consumers that was previously based on guesswork.
Now is the time to prepare to fill the gaps that third-party cookies disappearing will leave in your marketing data collection. First-party customer data is actually a competitive advantage and one, that with Shoppable®, is actually super fast and easy to launch. Depending on the Shoppable® product selected, set up can be as short as 30 minutes to approximately two weeks.
Obtaining first-party customer data with Shoppable® is also extremely cost-effective. There are no additional personnel costs. No engineering, fulfillment. or customer service teams are required. Nor do you need to run a warehouse. It’s a direct-to-consumer-like experience for your online shoppers without all the hassle and expense for you. No channel conflict, either, since you work with your existing merchants via our extensive retail partner catalog.
Most importantly, access to first-party customer data allows you to listen and respond to your customers.
You can give them the products that they want, at the right time, and at the right price. Privacy is also assured. Our products are fully PCI DSS compliant with a secure API to handle your customer data. Shoppable®, further, creates the frictionless online checkout experience that is desired by your consumers, improving conversion rates, decreasing abandoned carts, and increasing your sales!