First party data

What is first party data?

First party data is information that is collected about a user via a company where a user is directly an audience or a customer. The company owns the digital marketing data sources such as websites, mobile apps, CRM, social media etc.

First party data is used to identify consumer preferences, including:

• Demography: age, gender, income, education, geographic location
• Interests, hobbies and passions
• Purchase history and intentions
• Visit and interactions logs
• Etc

First party data is considered more valuable because of the quality of the data, the trust and relationship you have built with the user.

Why is first-party data important?

Data is important for a business to make better decisions, better marketing, utilise personalised ads and services to increase the chance of a conversion.

There are reasons why first party data is more important in the future:

• Data privacy legislation and technology are making data sharing and selling more difficult, so first-party data is more important.
• The fade out of third party cookies by browsers such as Google, Safari, Firefox. This will be done in one or two years. Third party scripts won't be able to track users across the internet.
• First party data gives more control: easy to collect, easy to erase, easy to keep updated and in control of the user, allowing a company to use data based on consent that can change from time to time.

How to collect first party data?

The normal ways of collecting first party data includes Google Analytics, mobile apps, social media, customer surveys, support tickets and messages, customer service emails, SMS, CRM and point of purchase interactions. You can also collect additional data such as user interactions, gather and manage all first party data with a first party Data Management Platform (DMP) like UniSignIn data platform.