Declared data is the new norm in digital marketing. It enables businesses to target prospects based on their wants and needs, and not just bare assumptions. Discover in this article everything you need to know about declared data.
Business is always changing. Brands have to rapidly adapt to grow and remain competitive. Moving into new markets, creating products, and discovering customer segments is profitable but difficult.
Too many marketers make the mistake of approaching these processes with assumptions. Hunches. Ideas.
Declared data is a better solution. This is information that customers give to you directly through conversational experiences on platforms like Facebook Messenger. Chatbots enable marketers to automate personalized one to one customer engagements that capture declared data on their preferences at scale and drive actions valuable to your business. Engaged customers account for 23% of a business’ profit, revenue, and relationship growth.
What is declared data?
Declared data, also known as zero party data, is information that is explicitly volunteered by consumers in a direct interaction with your business. It can be used to validate demographic data. But it also enables marketers to identify the needs, wants and desires of a customer. It is data most marketers can only assume about their audience unless they explicitly collect it.
However, it isn’t just about using a chatbot as a high-performance marketing channel. It’s more importantly about the actionable data you collect to support launching new channels.
Here’s how declared data can be used strategically to aid business growth and improve brand-wide growth.
Privacy Updates Making Declared Data Essential in Digital Marketing
Customer behavior is contantly changing, which impacts digital marketers on a daily basis. One major change in customer behavior along with recent privacy updates has significantly changed how businesses can collect data.
Customers want to feel safe when shopping online. They are increasingly concerned about having their data shared between advertisers, publishers, social media networks, and apps.
One of the major privacy updates includes the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which came into effect on May 25th, 2018. The new legislation refined how brands can collect, store, and process any personal data of European citizens. By December 2018, several months after the legislation was introduced, still only 50% of businesses became fully GDPR compliant.
Another privacy update was introduced as the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which protects California residents’ privacy when personal data is being collected. It gives citizens the right to know:
- What personal data has been collected.
- If their personal data is being sold.
- Who is buying their data.
- How to opt-out of data collection and selling.
- And more.
Apple also released iOS 14 with many new privacy features. One of the biggest changes was requiring all apps to ask users for tracking permission. This prohibits certain data collection that’s normally used for attribution and measuring marketing performance unless users opt in.
These privacy updates have affected most ad networks that marketers use to acquire customers. This is because they rely on user information to report on performance, attribute conversions accurately, and many other functions.
Last but not least, Google is currently set to phase out third-party cookies in Chrome by 2024 and offer more controls that let users block sites from tracking them. It’s another fundamental change in digital advertising. Companies that relied on these cookies for collecting data and understanding their customers’ behavior and preferences must shift their strategy.
These changes will cause a fundamental rethink in how marketers track and attribute conversions across the internet.
Collecting data will always be an essential part of digital marketing. And luckily, there is still a way to abide by privacy laws, make consumers feel safe, and use data responsibly. That can be achieved by leveraging declared data or also known as zero party data.
1. Use Declared Data for Product Development
Declared data is information explicitly given to you by a customer. It is the most accurate source of information since traditional behavioural and demographic analytics only scratch the surface.
When you use conversational chatbots, customers information like their budget, product interests, who they are shopping for, and other information that you can’t get elsewhere.
Not only can this information be used to greatly improve customer experience and satisfaction by giving them exactly what they are seeking, but it can also be used for future product development.
This information explicitly tells a brand how much customers are willing to spend. What product categories they are interested in. Who they are buying something for.
They can develop new products that align with popular items and categories to continue increasing conversions, revenue, and offering a more delightful shopping experience that matches customer intent.
Purple, a D2C mattress company, used Spectrm’s conversational chatbots to develop more efficient ways to prospect new customers through their “Mattress Finder.” Prospects could discover the best mattress based on their personal preferences, learn more about Purple, and purchase recommended products in a single ad.
This resulted in over one million one-to-one brand engagements, 80% of revenue from touchpoint closed in 7 days, and 4x return on ad spend.
2. Expand Into New Markets
Expanding into new markets requires large amounts of resources. But it is highly rewarding when done correctly. Brands need to quickly gauge a market’s interest in their product and stand out from the competition.
63% of customers are highly annoyed by the old-fashioned approach of blasting generic ad messages repeatedly. Engaging with customers through conversational ads, on the other hand, boosts favorability, purchase intent, and allows you to directly determine their interest.
The resulting zero party data collected from personalized conversations enables marketers to offer a better experience than competitors and deliver a unique value proposition. This opens up an entirely new channel to target and drive revenue from all stemming from declared data.
The automotive brand Ford boosted favorability, purchase intent, and leads in the context of increased competition in Thailand using a conversational assistant built with Spectrm. They created a conversational campaign using Spectrm’s Conversational Display Ads to stand out from local competition, increase demand for their new SUV category, and capture leads.
The assistant customized the conversation flow based on the user’s preferences and different micro-conversions. The campaign increased Ford’s purchase intent by 38% and consideration by 54% which is higher than the automotive industry benchmark. Ford also decreased cost per micro-conversion by 40%.
3. Declared Data to Improve Branding Across an Entire Business
Feedback from customers can improve specific areas and strategies of a business such as targeting and product recommendations but also the brand as a whole.
Declared data that’s collected influences everything. How you tailor marketing. How you build advertising campaigns. How you write marketing messages. This creates an authentic brand which 86% of consumers say is a deciding factor in what businesses they support.
An entire company’s branding can be reshaped and optimized to resonate with customers, increase recognition, and boost loyalty by using conversational intelligence and the declared data it receives directly from customers.
4. Enrich Targeting with Hypersegments
Using chatbots to move customers through a funnel quicker with one on one conversations helps you discover meaningful segments.
Small groups of customers with unique buying intents, interests, and behaviours can be isolated to send targeted messages and recommendations. 90% of marketing leaders agree personalization significantly increases business profitability.
These groups can also be exported to be used as new audiences on Facebook and Instagram. Or build more powerful lookalike audiences.
Europe’s largest phone provider Telekom used a Facebook Messenger chatbot built with Spectrm to scale customer acquisition, lift conversions, and reach new segments. Telekom achieved a 9x contract conversion increase by offering a conversational contract finder that provided millennials with contracts personalized to their needs.
Final Thoughts on Creating a Declared Data Strategy
Marketing growth becomes limited when it’s based on hunches and assumptions. It results in mediocre and one-to-many interactions that aren’t genuine.
Declared data from conversational chatbots solves this and creates new opportunities that are difficult to find otherwise. It provides information that a customer directly declares. Not what you think they’d say. This explicit data is used to launch new channels, improve retargeting, and more.
The first application is product development. Customers stating what products they are looking for, their budget, and who they are shopping for enables brands to develop similar products that are in high demand. Popular items or categories can be promoted and recommended more often too within chatbot scripts.
Secondly, brands can expand into new markets. Tailored engagements boosts favorability and allows you to interface with a new target market to gauge their interest. Conversational marketing insights can then be used to offer a unique experience and stand out among local competition.
The insights collected from conversational chatbots can be used to reshape an entire brand’s identity, targeting, and messaging. This builds a business that resonates with a specific customer base, improves recognition, and boosts loyalty.
Discover new hypersegments based on meaningful declared data and create delightful personalized experiences that are tailored just for them. This increases conversion rates and aids in creating new lookalike audiences on Facebook and Instagram.
The foundation of a declared data strategy rests on engaging customers using a chatbot platform that makes every declared datapoint actionable. Get in touch with us today to learn how our conversational marketing platform can help grow your brand with better chatbot technology.
What is declared data?
Declared data, also known as zero party data, is information that is explicitly volunteered by consumers in a direct interaction with your business. It can be used to validate demographic data. But it also enables marketers to identify the needs, wants and desires of a customer. It is data most marketers can only assume about their audience unless they explicitly collect it.
Using marketing chatbots to capture declared data enables brands to:
- Personalize customer journeys and recommend relevant products to customers before they even visit your website.
- Extract customer insights from social media channels that usually lock you out of their audience data.
- Retarget customers in chat with personalized messages and offers.
- Collect feedback or do market research for new products and services.
What is first party data?
First party data is the information you collect about your audience or customers.
First party data includes:
- Data from behaviors or actions performed by customers across your website
- Data you have in your CRM
- Subscription data
- Data from your social media accounts
What is the difference between declared data and first party data?
Both declared data and first party data have great value to your business. The difference is that while collecting declared data, you are asking for information directly from your prospects, leaving no room for any assumptions. With first party data, however, prospects are giving you permission to collect information about them as they browse through your website.
