Connecting Digital Client-Acquisition with Zero-Party Data

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the adoption of digital marketing for client acquisition.

Pre-2020, companies could take advantage of physical locations and other non-digital means (e.g. conferences, flyers) to acquire clients. Between 2020 and 2022, with restrictions and distancing mandates, the ROI of these non-digital sources for acquiring clients started to decrease, leading to many companies investing heavily in their digital client acquisition.

In addition, as the digital space become more popular, this had a snowball effect where more and more companies jumped in to stay in line with their competitors, leading to the digital space becoming even more crowded, pushing the cost-to-acquire a client even higher.

In parallel, the privacy-blocking focus of Apple and the loss of web cookies, has led to an increased interest in leveraging client data for acquisition and retention efforts. Zero-Party and First-Party Data, the two most focused categories of client data, are getting more and more attention, especially as they are related to better targeting and personalization for high-value clients.

The main difference between Zero-Party Data and First-Party Data is that Zero-Party Data is information that a client intentionally and proactively shares with a company (like their buying or communication preferences), while First-Party Data is typically information that is a by-product of interaction (like purchase history), and lacks the certainty of First-Party Data.

If Zero-Party Data is your mom telling you she’s on her way to visit you (so you can get the guest room ready), First-Party Data is watching her car get ever closer on Google Maps (she might show up, but then again, is she visiting your sibling down the block?). In this scenario, and many others, Zero-Party Data trumps First-Party Data in understanding the client and serving them better.

For the most part, digital client acquisition has adopted the same tactics to incite people to sign-up as other acquisition channels, like providing a discount or a Freemium or demonstrating the value of the brand and its products or services. At this stage, very little information is asked of the client, other than their contact information like email and phone number and personal information like name, language, and postal code (for geographic segmentation).

A proposal is to commence the collection of Zero-Party data at the point of acquisition, to better grade the quality of the acquired clients, and maximize retention efforts.

Below is a sample of the types of questions that could easily be integrated into a Digital Acquisition from:

1. What problem are you trying to solve?
2. Why did you come to Company X to solve this problem?

And depending on whether it’s a lead that is acquired (they have not made a purchase), an additional question to ask would be:

1. What is preventing you from using Company X’s product or service to solve your problem?

This way, at the source, clients have explicitly provided key information that can be used to grade the client and inform any retention efforts. If this information is stored in the company’s CRM and tagged to the client, this information will continue to drive targeting and personalization, improving both the client retention and their lifetime value.

Written by Khalil Guliwala.

Khalil Guliwala is a CRM Strategist who specializes in using data and digital marketing to inspire customer loyalty. Get more from Khalil by following him on LinkedIn.