Zero party data: Get deeper customer insights with gamification

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Zero party data is the gold standard for marketers and business owners when it comes to useful information, because it’s intentionally and directly shared with a brand by the customers themselves. It can include consumer preferences, purchase intentions, their own personal context, and how they’d generally like to be viewed or treated.

It’s not like demographic data that can be overly general, or based on purchase history from other companies that can border on being irrelevant; it’s not even based on a customer’s historical interactions with the business in question, which can be out of date or out of context – it’s information a customer is willingly and intentionally providing to help the business help them. Providing zero party data is essentially self-segmentation by your customer base.

But how do you get hold of such information? How do you consistently get your customers to tell you how they want to be treated and what they really want from your brand? In this article, we’re going to look at how you can use gamified content and marketing games to make zero party data collection efficient and reliable.

An example of zero party data

The chances are you’ll have given zero party data to brands already. For example, if you were to interact with a form on a site that sold high-end skincare, and you ticked a box that said: “I have a quick skincare routine in place, but I think it could be better and I’d like to learn more,” you’ve provided that brand with zero party data.

They could then provide a more personalised journey for you, and send you different content if you signed up to their mailing list than they would send to the person who ticked the box that said: “My face is my life: I use retinol every other night, and I don’t leave the house without SPF. I’m looking for the latest innovations to keep myself looking young.”

This way, the business is better able to understand and anticipate your needs relative to their industry.

By providing that information, they demonstrably know you as a customer better than they could have before.

Differentiating between first, second, and third party data

All customer data is valuable, but different types of data can be more useful to certain businesses or functions than others. Understanding the difference between the 4 different types of customer data is essential to identify which is of most value to you in a given project.

To make it easier to differentiate between the 4, let’s imagine 4 different skincare brands, recommending you 4 different products, but making their recommendation based solely on the different data collection methods.

Third party data

You visit a store, and you’re presented with a moisturiser that includes SPF. The sales ambassador says:

I’ve bought you this because people of your demographic often go abroad to sunnier climes at this time of year.

This is data collected by third parties, or external parties, such as aggregators, that are not involved doing business with customers directly. This can be compiled from multiple different sources, and can include online behaviour, demographic information, or even purchase history from other businesses. It can also be sourced from third-party cookies, which are cookies placed on a user’s device by website’s the user is not visiting – for example: third-party images or ads.

While this data can be more broad in scale and offer businesses a wider audience view, it’s also typically of the lowest quality and accuracy, and carries more privacy risks and compliance issues than other types of consumer data.

Second party data

The second store you visit, you’re presented with a large bottle of cleanser. The sales ambassador says:

This is what you bought from the chemist next door last week, so here it is again.

Second party data is data a business uses that they didn’t collect themselves. It’s essentially data a business is using secondhand, typically sourced from a trusted partner.

For example, a furniture brand who have their own stores, but also supply their stock to independent stores, might share their own first party data with the independent stores to use as second party data. It can also sometimes be purchased from other trusted parties.

While it can be of a high quality, and highly relevant, it can be limited in availability, and it means the business is having to depend on another organisation.

First party data

You log into your account on another skincare’s eCommerce site. You’re recommended a large jar of night cream. It’s the same type of night cream you ordered a sample sachet of through their site a month ago.

First party data is collected directly through a business’s customers. This can be through website visits and interactions through cookies, purchase history, email interactions, and customer service logs.

While this is first hand and therefore more accurate than second and third party data, it’s typically more limited in scale, and can have potential biases (for example, you may be targeting a broader audience segment than you have previously, but your first party data will only account for the segment that currently does business with you, their data may not be applicable to the customers you’re trying to attract).

Zero party data

You head out to the final skincare store. The sales ambassador recommends you a very specific jar of hyaluronic acid. They say:

I’m recommending this because you interacted with some of our marketing, and indicated that you suffered from dry skin despite moisturising, and wanted a solution. Use this before applying your moisturiser for better results.

Zero party data, as already discussed, is data straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. It’s customers literally telling you their preferences and intentions – it’s the inside scoop. It’s the most up to date, the most specific, and the most accurate, allowing you to be more accurate in your communications: sending the right message, at the right time, to the right person.

While it offers unrivalled opportunities to personalise each touchpoint of the customer journey and build relationships, it is necessarily limited in volume and scale.

Gamification is the winning strategy when it comes to collecting zero party data

Gamification is the application of game mechanics to enhance user engagement. Essentially you’re replacing traditional mediums with interactive content that taps into a user’s curiosity, competitive spirit, or their hunger for social interaction.

It’s a way of making your content more fun and immersive to truly capture a prospective customer’s attention and encourage them to take a desired action.

How gamifying zero party data collection looks in practice

Let’s pretend your business is a skincare brand. As part of a marketing game, you could include questions, or even tick-boxes, where targets can effortlessly indicate their skin type, how much time they spend looking after their skin, their monthly skincare budget, their knowledge level, and whether they’re interested in learning more, as well as giving them the option to opt-in to your marketing newsletter.

Because skincare is an enormous industry, with a broad range of customer types, knowing your audience’s individual preferences, provided by them, just creates infinite opportunities to communicate more effectively. Ultimately, selling anything comes down to communicating in the right way, so this can only serve to improve conversion rates, whatever industry you’re applying this to.

Does the type of game matter?

Yes.

When you create a marketing game, it needs to be entertaining, engaging, and deliver your branded message, but it also needs to help serve your business aims.

The Quiz: the most versatile game engine for sourcing zero party data

The Quiz format can lend itself to your cause in any number of ways. Whether you’re challenging your audience to prove their trivia knowledge in a given field, or sincerely assessing how much they know about a given topic, it’s intuitive for your users, and can yield a lot of useful information to inform your marketing efforts.

The Survey: an unbeatable solution for audience segmentation

Surveys are an easy, intuitive, and fast way to get a lot of users to give you zero party data. For maximum engagement, include them linked by QR codes on receipts and invoices, and encourage participation by offering an instant game upon completion, such as a Spin the Wheel or a Scratch Card.

The Product Recommendation Quiz: the MVP of gamified content for zero party data collection

While all gamification experiences can be used to source zero party data for companies looking to gain a competitive advantage, the Product Recommendation Quiz stands head and shoulders above all others if you’re looking for customer insights on specific products or ranges.

You start by creating results profiles, which are the products. Then you create a series of questions, each of which reveals a customer preference or need, with the multiple choice answers ultimately leading to a product recommendation.

The beauty of this marketing game is that every single user interaction reveals more zero party data. It’s the perfect exchange: as people play through the gamified experience, businesses and marketers learn what makes them tick.

Games: baiting the hook

You’re not making a game just to deliver a fun experience, you’re using a fun experience to encourage user behaviour and ultimately contribute to conversions and growth, either directly by distributing discount codes or taking users to strategic landing pages through a CTA button, or indirectly through data collection or spreading brand awareness. The games are the vehicle.

The best marketing games always tie in thematically with your campaign or promotion, like a Football Game if you’re a football team’s marketing department promoting the fan experience, an instant win game if you’re a casino, or a Media Contest if you’re a tech company holding a competition to win a new digital camera.

However, whether it’s a Media Contest, a Quiz, or even a casual mini game, you can always include a data collection form where you can encourage customers to submit zero party data.

Gamification experiences: for maximum immersion and long-term engagement

Gamification experiences are a great way to maximise on all the possibilities listed above. Create multi-level, playable experiences using the Dynamic Path™ format to combine any of the games engines on the Drimify catalogue to tell your branded story, delight users, and collect zero party data, all over a longer period of time – this can give users multiple chances to volunteer information, and keeps them interacting with your brand for longer.

Zero party data needs to be collected consistently to be effective long term

Here’s the thing about a lot of zero party data. Over time, some of it can change.

As a consumer, I may be a certain type of customer today, but I could be a completely different kind of customer in a couple of years. Let’s go back to the skincare example from earlier. When you first visited the skincare website, you said you were looking to learn more. Well, after their targeted campaigns facilitate you learning more about skincare, and your routine gets more sophisticated, you’ve essentially become a different customer with different needs and a different frame of reference. You’ve moved to a new audience segment for both their, and your purposes.

This is one of the many reasons why long-term gamification is so much more effective than using it on a one-and-done approach. Modern gamification platforms make it so easy to make games, improve and update games over time, and embed them across your websites and in your email marketing, making it an ideal solution for passively generating zero party data.

Collect, enrich, repeat

So what do do once you’ve collected all that zero party data?

It depends on exactly what your business is, and exactly what your current focus, but the general playbook runs as follows:

1. 💰 Enrich your customer relationship management software and databases with everything you’ve learned about your users.
2. 🗂️ Identify if you’ve discovered a new customer profile, and if so, start tailoring content and journeys to better serve that segment.
3. 🎨 Use the data to start personalising customer journeys. Make sure everyone’s put onto the correct mailing lists so they’re receiving the promotions, content, and materials that are tailored to appeal to their customer types.

Expert advice

Having a healthy and reliable supply of zero party customer data is great, but time is finite, and making use of it can be a big job. Make sure you’re using up to date marketing automation software to maximise the potential that can be achieved when it comes to personalising customer journeys.

For example, if you know from your zero party data that a customer doesn’t suffer from dry skin, it would be pointless, and even harmful to the relationship, to keep suggesting products that are specifically formulated for dry skin. By contrast, if all your communications at every customer touchpoint are spot on, and your product recommendations accurate, your chances for conversions will multiply and multiply.

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