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How to Collect Zero‑Party Data

Zero-Party Data Sources by Needs

How is your brand responding to the changing attitudes, regulations, and technologies related to consumer data and privacy?

According to Econsultancy, 49% of marketers say zero-party data (ZPD) is their most favored solution. ZPD is all of the consent-based, personal context data that customers intentionally and proactively share with a brand, in order to improve their experience with the brand — personal needs, preferences, interests, favorites, motivations, intentions, etc.

Unlike first-party and third-party data, ZPD is uniquely valuable because it enables brands to deliver customer experiences that are at once welcome, relevant, and compliant — the three pillars of Privacy-First Personalization.

Brands collect ZPD by engaging customers directly and asking them for it, along with permission to use it for specific purposes that benefit the customer. This brings data collection out of the fine print and into the light, upending the old ways of buying data (i.e. third-party) and quietly tracking customer activity (i.e. first-party) behind the scenes.

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Step 1

Define Your ZPD Data Model

ZPD is brand-specific, so the first step is to identify the most important customer attributes for your business — not just email or mobile phone opt-ins, but also attributes like goals, preferences, interests, wish lists, and intentions. Some attributes may be immutable or long-lived (e.g. a personal characteristic, or a list of favorites), while others may be shorter-lived (e.g. plans to take a family vacation or renovate a kitchen).

Focus on customer attributes that you can use to improve customer experiences by, say, personalizing the content, products, and offers that you show each customer. Just a single data point can go a long way. For example, when a user tells Yelp that they’re a vegetarian, Yelp can provide them with vegetarian-friendly recommendations rather than steakhouses.

Once you’ve defined your brand’s ZPD data model, it’s time to collect the data.

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Step 2

Tap Existing ZPD Sources

Often without realizing it, brands have latent ZPD sources they can tap into — like customer surveys, chat bots, loyalty programs, or email preference centers.

By tapping into all of your sources and unifying the ZPD they capture into centralized ZPD profiles, you can keep ZPD organized and up-to-date, make it accessible to your teams and tools, and use it to improve customer experiences.

Specialized ZPD infrastructure software, like the Wyng ZPD API, makes the job easier by streamlining data processing and automating essential functions — like smart merging, cross-session unification, pseudonymization, and ZPD consent management and governance.

Step 3

Add New ZPD Sources

Whether you’re starting from scratch or filling gaps in existing ZPD profiles, the “zero-party data formula” offers a systematic approach to creating new ZPD sources:

Microexperiences plus Moments plus Value Exchange equals Zero-Party Data
  • Microexperiences: Create digital experiences that ask customers for one or more personal attributes, and permission to use the data for their benefit;
  • Moments: Deliver the microexperiences to the right audiences, at the right moments of engagement on your website, app, or landing pages;
  • Value Exchange: Provide customers value in return for the data they share with you.

Forrester Research describes ZPD microexperiences as “short, simple interactions that ask a customer to volunteer three or four bits of information about themselves in context and in exchange for clear value.”

Depending on the target audience, microexperiences can be delivered as:

  • Conversational experiences — like a "conversational opt-in" or "next best question" on a website, personalized to a specific segment of visitors (e.g. anonymous visitors, or known customers whose profiles are missing a certain ZPD attribute, or customers for whom it’s time to refresh an attribute);
  • Always-on, evergreen experiences — like a product finder quiz on an e-commerce site, or an email opt-in form embedded in a website footer;
  • Campaign landing pages — like a survey sent to an email list, or a sampling campaign directed to a Facebook audience.
Example Zero-Party Data model for skin types
Example product finder quiz

Why do customers share their personal data with a brand? According to Deloitte, 79% of consumers are willing to share data when they get value in return. And brands can deliver value in multiple ways — both “in the moment” as part of a microexperience, and “in the future” as part of ongoing interactions.

Value “in the moment” may include:

  • Recommendations — product recommendations, guidance, or other advice, personalized using the ZPD shared as part of the microexperience;
  • Offers — promo codes, coupons, free samples, loyalty points, instant wins, giveaways, or other benefits unlocked as part of the microexperience;
  • Entertainment — entertaining, gamified, or fun experiences;
  • Education — informative or instructional experiences;
  • Assessment — experiences that test knowledge and score results;
  • Exclusivity — gated content or exclusive access to an event.

Value “in the future” entails providing customers with more relevant or personalized communications, offers, and recommendations — on an ongoing basis — based on the ZPD they shared with you.

Your microexperiences should clearly explain what types of communications the customer is opting into, how their data will be used, and link to your privacy policy. This is a best practice that meets the criteria of freely given, specific, informed, and unambiguous consent — the highest bar for compliance worldwide, set by GDPR.

It’s easy to create ZPD microexperiences using technology purpose-built for the job, like Wyng Microexperiences. You can also source ZPD by using other tools like a CMS, a survey builder, or a form builder. And as always, make sure every source feeds your centralized ZPD profiles, so you can make the most of the data.

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Step 4

Make It Easy For Customers To Keep Their ZPD Up-To-Date

ZPD should be collected and used transparently, and the best practice is for a brand to make the data accessible to each customer on an ongoing basis, via a secure customer portal on the brand’s website or mobile app.

A portal makes it easy for customers to add, update, or revoke data whenever they want, and continually fine-tune their relationship with the brand — giving them transparency, choice, and control, while also building trust.

Brands can custom-build and maintain a portal, or use a ZPD platform like Wyng to streamline the process.

The Wyng platform auto-generates a portal template (based on the brand's ZPD data model), which can be re-skinned to match the brand's design guidelines.

The portal embeds directly into the website (or app), and can sit in front of the site login (whereby access is authenticated via temporary onetime password), or behind site login, depending on the brand's needs.

Examples and Idea Starters

Vrbo vacay finder
01
Vrbo, an Expedia Group company and the most popular vacation rental site in the U.S., deployed the Vrbo Vacay Finder, a microexperience that serves up individualized vacation destination recommendations based on a traveler’s personal preferences. 
02
Acne Free, a dermatology-inspired acne treatment, provides a diagnostic questionnaire to help customers find the right product for their condition. After participating, consumers get a personalized product recommendation along with a coupon offer.
Acne Free quiz
Dermablend complimentary sample
03
Dermablend, a L’Oréal brand, offers a limited number of free product samples via campaign landing pages. Consumers receive samples in exchange for sharing their skin type, main skin concern, skin tone, name, email opt-in, date of birth, and address.
04
Bai Brands, a division of Keurig Dr. Pepper, created a “proof of purchase” microexperience to convert unknown customers to known contacts. After purchasing a bottle of Bai, customers enter their information (including email, ZIP code, phone number and date of birth) and the on-pack UPC code to unlock a chance to win prizes.
Weekly prize pack microexperience
TBS show quiz
05
TBS, a television network owned by WarnerMedia, embeds fun trivia quizzes about their shows on tbs.com. The quizzes collect data about each viewer’s knowledge of the show, along with their names and an email opt-in. The quizzes are also gamified, with countdown timers for each question, and each participant is rewarded with a sweepstakes entry.
06
Arm & Hammer, a Church & Dwight brand, engages visitors to armandhammer.com with a fun personality quiz. After completing a form and answering a series of interactive questions about cat ownership, participants are served a personalized product recommendation, a $2 coupon, and their “Purrsonality” type that they can share on social media. In the process, the brand collects contact information from each customer, as well as preference data related to their pet ownership.
Whats your Purrsonality quiz

The Bottom Line

To successfully collect ZDP,  first define your brand’s ZPD data model and then start collecting the ZPD you need — by tapping existing sources, adding new sources, and making it easy for customers to keep their ZPD up-to-date.

This is the second in a series of posts about zero-party data and Privacy-First Personalization. Read the first post here: The Future Of Personalization Is "Privacy-First”.

To learn about our API-powered platform for ZPD and Privacy-First Personalization, request a demo below.

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