3 min read
However, data is critical in today’s engagement-focused marketing battlefield. As the consumer journey becomes increasingly complex, it is getting more and more difficult to achieve effective campaign results by relying on first-party data alone. That is why third-party data remains a vital tool for marketers to better target their customers with personalized offers and find lookalikes. In fact, when leveraged in the right way, third-party data can significantly impact your campaign success and put you one step ahead.
Here are four ways how you can maximize value from third-party data.
1. Discover Customers’ External Interests to Expand Share of Wallet
You already know your customers’ interactions with your brand based on first-party data collected from your websites, apps and other owned channels. It provides you with basic demographic information, such as gender, age and geo-location, and insights into individual purchasing patterns and interests – information that can help guide your campaign targeting decisions.
But how do you know what they are doing beyond your channels? What are their external interests that you can target with your current or new offerings? This is where you can utilize third-party data.
By using the right artificial intelligence (AI) tools to crunch aggregated third-party data alongside your own data, you can widen the lens to learn more about your customers’ external interest, and more closely pinpoint your ideal audience for effective targeting.
2. Map Cross-Screen Journeys for a Single Customer View
In today’s fast-moving digital market, identifying your customers’ interest is one thing; knowing when and where to engage them at different stages of the funnel is another.
The reality is customer journeys have become increasingly complex. Not only are people hopping from one site or app to the next for research or purchase, they are also using multiple devices to do so.
By combining third-party and first-party data, you are able to see the complete customer journey on and beyond your own channels to create a single customer view. This allows you to predict purchase intent – when and where – and then engage them with relevant offers when they are most likely to buy, increasing your marketing effectiveness.
3. Create Personalized Product Recommendations for New Visitors
How do you know what to recommend when first-time visitors land on your site? Generic website content or completely irrelevant product recommendations are unlikely to keep them engaged. However, By leveraging third-party data, you can use AI to identify their interests and behavior on the external sites and predict future purchasing behavior.
For example, if you are a fashion retailer and a new visitor has visited several external websites in the past week looking at formal dresses and bags, you can then show her similar products confidently when she first comes to your site. You can even recommend related-products that could complete the look, such as heels or jewelry.
4. Grow Customer Base With Lookalikes
Finding new customers is an ongoing challenge for marketers as it is hard to know where to invest your time and money.
While it is impossible to duplicate your core customers, you can use third-party data to discover new, unique, high-value prospects who look like them.
Using AI lookalike modeling to analyze both first-party and third-party data, you can look for new audience segments with similar attributes that your current customers have. AI can rank the results based on which attributes are closest to your best audience. With such insight, you can then target the segment that is most likely to convert with relevant offers and extend your reach.
When used in combination with your own data and leveraged in the right way, it’s clear that third-party data is still extremely valuable. By helping you avoid owned-channel vision, it enables you to discover more about your customers, and even find new ones – a great win in today’s marketing war.
Want to know more about how Appier’s AI solutions can help you maximize value from third-party data? Get in touch today!
