Harnessing first party data to maximise marketing personalisation

Today’s marketers face a customer personalisation dilemma.

On the one hand, customers want brands to provide messages and experiences tailored to their specific needs. On the other, they are concerned about invasions of privacy and will shun brands whose behaviour oversteps the mark.

This second trend has been brought to life by the actions of platform companies including Google and Apple, which are making it harder for marketers to gain access to third-party data - especially the third-party cookies which have been commonly used to target and supress audience segments for paid media campaigns.

The result is that marketers today are having to rely increasingly on their own data to gain a clearer picture of their customers if they want to reach them with appropriate messages and offers.

For many brands however useful first party data can be in short supply, or may be distributed across a range of systems, providing no clear view of individual customers.

What is needed is a way to easily collect and manage first party data in a single location, so it can be used to provide a clear and accurate picture of each customer, their attributes, behaviours, and preferences.

The importance of getting personal

The COVID pandemic led many Australians to embrace digital channels like never before, with digital services providing a lifeline to everything from work and education to entertainment and grocery shopping.

The result now is that Australians are much more discerning regarding the digital brands they engage with and have expectations of personalised service that are higher than ever before. They don’t want to be bombarded with messages which are not relevant to their circumstances, histories, or needs.

This same trend is born out around the world, with McKinsey’s Next in Personalization 2021 Report finding 71 per cent of consumers expected companies to deliver personalised interactions, with 76 per cent becoming frustrated when this didn’t happen.

The implications of these changed expectations are clear, with McKinsey also reporting that 75 percent of consumers tried a new shopping behaviour during the pandemic. Conversely, 78 per cent of consumers reported they were more likely to make repeat purchases from companies that personalised.

The n3 Hub solution

The marketing technology developer n3 Hub meets marketers’ needs for more personalised experiences by bringing their customer data into a unified system, known as the n3 Customer Data Platform (CDP).

Data is drawn into the n3 Hub CDP from multiple sources, such as point-of-sales systems, online shopping carts, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, and customer relationship management (CRM) tools, where it is generates a single customer view.

In this way the n3 Hub CDP provides an in-depth picture of each customer, including information about them as people, their past interactions and behaviours, and information on their likes and dislikes, which can be used to anticipate their future needs and ensure messages and experiences are tailored accordingly.

Marketers can use the data within n3 Hub’s CDP to create meaningful audience segments, and tailor communications and messaging that improves campaign response rates and hence boosts marketing efficiency.

The n3 Hub CDP integrates with leading data sources for smooth data ingestion, and its data cleansing capabilities ensure customer information is as accurate as possible. It also integrates with popular campaign management tools from Adobe, Oracle, Salesforce and more, enabling targeted messages to easily reach their intended audiences.

The n3 Hub CDP offers full reporting, which allows marketers to be sure they are maximising the benefits of personalisation and achieving the best possible results.

As an Australasian-born company, n3 Hub’s customers have access to a local development team that is responsive to their needs. Furthermore, because n3 Hub can be installed on premise (cloud or data centre) or used as a service local customers can be assured, they comply with data sovereignty requirements relating to the handling of personally identifiable information (PII).

n3 Hub CDP in action

n3 Hub is used by a range of leading brands including Suncorp and Dymocks.

One organisation to benefit from the n3 Hub is a Financial Services Provider, specialising in mortgages and home loans. With the third-party cookies becoming a less effective way to target paid media, they needed to improve the relevancy of its paid media spend by better leveraging their first party data, while also still complying with all relevant security and privacy requirements.

By using the n3 Hub CDP, they were able to create highly targeted segments, such as first home buyers, and self-employed customers, using their existing customer data. These targeted segments meant they could then exclude existing customers from irrelevant campaigns while targeting them with messages that were specific to their individual needs.

People’s growing utilisation of digital channels will undoubtedly see a continued rise in their expectation for tailored and meaningful experiences, from the messages they receive to the products and services they consume.

As a locally developed solution with deep integrations into popular data sources and campaign platforms, the n3 Hub CDP provides marketers in Australia and New Zealand with a comprehensive solution for maximising customer experiences while ensuring their marketing dollars are spent efficiently.

Find out how the n3 Hub CDP can deliver you a marketing and CX utopia. Request a demo today.