If you wanted to know what it’s like to downhill ski or scuba dive, you could watch a film, read a book, or ask a friend. However, it’s unlikely that you would really understand what it’s like to actually experience skiing or diving because you wouldn’t have firsthand experience. The experiences shared by others might be interesting and valuable, but not as good as experiencing it yourself.
The same can be said for first-party data, which is data about your customers or prospective customers that you gather yourself. While second and third-party data may have a place in your marketing or re-marketing strategy, first party data will always be the best data.
“First-party data relationships are important not for their marketing value independent of other functions, but because they fuel all significant functions of the enterprise, including product development, customer value analysis, and pricing.” – IAB, 2018
For product brands, one of the foremost methods to acquire first-party data is via product registration. Although the data varies depending on the questions asked during registration, in general registration data includes customer, product, vendor, and purchase specific data, as well as a way to contact the customer directly (email, mobile number, address, and/or social media ID).
Registration data is highly valuable due to three key factors: it’s self-reported, it’s time-based, and it’s specific to the product owned. The customer insight that can be gleaned from this information can be used to fuel a number of applications from marketing and advertising to new product development.
Case in point, Cuisinart, a Registria client, recently shared how first-party data gathered using Photoregister(SM) drives their email marketing, improves their ratings and reviews, opens the door for recruiting brand ambassadors, and fuels their Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) business for parts and accessories.
Christine Kapp, Senior Digital Marketing Manager at Cuisinart
"First Party Data (from product registrations) is truly the best data, since this tells me about who our current customers are. Which then we can further append this information to further understand who they are," says Christine Kapp, Director of Digital Marketing at Cuisinart.
As Cuisinart and many of our partner brands will attest, owner knowledge is powerful throughout the organization. It is paramount to advancing a brand’s digital and DTC initiatives. It also drives better ownership experiences that lead to higher ratings and reviews, greater owner loyalty, and long-term owner value. And it all starts with the right owner onboarding experience.