How To Collect First Party Data With Ease

“...and the impact it has on your digital marketing efforts.”

‍Our CEO Jon Kazarian led a talk on the ins and outs of consumer data collection during our BizBash event last month. He delved into the history of first, second, and third-party data. In addition, he emphasizes why first-party data you collect yourself by conducting events is a game-changer.

What are the different types of marketing data?

Jon started with the basics by defining first-party data. In essence, it is “information collected by your organization.” He provides examples of first-party data and event hosting, including attendee registration information and their actions within the event. Essentially this is data that event organizers may use as a competitive advantage with their digital marketing efforts because they are the only ones with access to it. This is called “item-based collaborative filtering,” and that’s why we get ads that feel very spot on or personal to our tastes.

‍Second-party data is “collected by an organization that is often a partner of yours, generally not someone who’s a competitor.” This could include co-hosting a webinar or participating in an expo booth within an event. Jon makes sure to point out that second-party data lacks the uniqueness of first-party data because you are not the only one with access to the collected information.

‍Third-party data is information that a data aggregation company collects. Think Facebook, Linkedin, Google. Jon outlines that competitors have access to this data, which is often not optimal.

How does this relate to cookies?

As we look into a world with fewer cookies, Jon pinpoints that we all greatly value privacy from a consumer perspective. He says, “From the perspective of what that means for your marketing initiatives, it essentially means that the identification quality that you’ve historically had is going to degrade significantly.” Data privacy matters, and as event crafters, we have to responsibly forge our strategy for first-party data retrieval in this new frontier.

Since 2017, Apple, Mozilla, and Google have tightened regulations on collecting user data via user cookies. Apple made the most recent and arguably most significant adjustment in 2020. “Apple adjusted the default cookie setting for third-party cookie tracking within apps. And what that meant is that instead of having to actively opt-out of being tracked, they made an adjustment, now you actually have to actively opt into being tracked.” Google followed suit, implementing ‘Flock,’ which targets a group rather than an individual.

Benefits of first-party data for event marketers

Bringing it back to the value of event data collection, Jon says ‘At the end of the day, events are one of the most powerful, incredible ways that we as marketers can grow the breadth and depth of that first-party data that we have access to.” Much like the attendees of the BizBash digital event, event attendees gain the opportunity to participate in a robust virtual community and willingly provide registration, billing, and tracking information in return. Everybody wins.

Beyond the conventional email list with a first and last name attached, Accelevents offers an extensive menu of ways to collect attendee data at a high frequency. Our analytics can not only track which sessions an attendee joined, but they can also report the length of the time that attendee stayed in the session and whether or not they downloaded a pdf provided within the session’s details. This kind of data provides critical insights into your product quality and how to engage that growing community.