CDP Strategy: Expanding Your First-Party Data Pool

Can consumers purchase your products through third-parties, as well as via your own retail channels?

If so, it’s more than likely that you don’t have access to any of the data about these customers.

Who are they? Who did they buy your product from? Why did they buy your product? What other complementary products could you potentially sell to them? 

Imagine the value you could create if you could answer these questions and capture information about more users of your product – no matter the channel or seller they bought from.

Not only would this allow you to significantly grow your owned audience, it could also unlock a myriad of enhanced marketing opportunities throughout the customer journey. For example, consider the potential to expand your lookalike audience pool based on customers you didn’t sell to directly, but that you know have purchased your product.

Or imagine expanding into a new international market, following wholesale agreements, with the knowledge of who is buying your product from others – before you start selling it directly yourself.

As you can see, this makes for a compelling opportunity, and implementing a customer data platform (CDP) can help you bring this strategy to life.

What is a CDP?

A CDP is a solution that empowers retailers to collect, unify and manage customer data from multiple sources –  including your ecommerce site, social channels, email, offline interactions and more.

Having a single, centralised database like this enables businesses to gain valuable insights into customer behaviour, craft more personalised marketing campaigns, and enhance the overall customer experience.

You can read more about what a CDP is and the benefits for businesses in Swanky’s introduction to CDPs in ecommerce.

Using a CDP to grow your owned audience

Let’s consider some examples of how a brand could leverage a CDP to expand their owned audience – collecting, unifying and activating data from more than just their DTC customers.

Example 1: Mobile app downloads

This first use case is focused around brands selling tech products that require app installations.

Imagine a business that sells tech products directly to consumers, as well as via a network of retail partners. Whichever channel or retail partner a customer purchases from, they must install the brand’s mobile app to be able to use the product. The app install process involves asking users to grant marketing permissions.

Implementing a CDP would allow the brand to collect and unify data from all users upon installation – not just those users they sold to directly. This includes information such as device type, installation date, geolocation data and contact details.

Once the app is installed, data would be fed into the CDP, allowing a brand to capture information around device usage and user behaviour. This would include things like actions taken within the app, session data and push notification responses.

Beyond facilitating data capture from significantly more buyers – and allowing the creation of more customer profiles – the CDP would enable the brand to interrogate and activate this data too.

For example, they’d be empowered to:

• generate richer customer insights and learn about more of the people buying products;

• segment users based on various factors (such as location, device type, device usage etc.);

• deliver tailored, automated marketing messaging to the entire customer cohort, based on these segments (including relevant product upsell and cross-sell suggestions, timely upgrade communications and targeted content syndication);

• expand the size of a lookalike marketing audience for paid media – increasing the efficacy of ad spend and helping to grow a business faster;

• track app usage and engagement over time, enabling the measurement and forecasting of customer lifetime value;

• target churn prevention marketing and proactive customer service outreach at consumers with low device usage;

• follow wholesale partners into new international ecommerce markets with a pre-existing pool of customers to target or use as a lookalike audience marketing guide; and

• make the most of peak seasons, with significantly more reach thanks to a greater understanding of a whole customer base.

Example 2: Product warranty registration

Perhaps you sell products that have the option of warranty registration. If so, consider the potential of being able to collect the details of anyone who has purchased and registered one of your products (and given marketing permission), no matter where they bought it from.

When customers register their products online, they typically provide key information such as contact, purchase and product details. A CDP could capture and centralise this data, creating detailed customer profiles.

This data could then be used to gauge where a consumer is in their ownership journey and offer personalised content – similarly to our tech app example earlier.

For example, for users who have only recently purchased the product, you could send them targeted communications with helpful how-to guides or product care guidelines.

As they move through their ownership journey, you can continue using relevant content to nurture positive brand-consumer relationships. This could include sending service or upgrade offers to customers with a longer ownership duration.

Example 3: Competitions or giveaways

This next CDP strategy is more widely applicable and isn’t restricted to app downloads or warranty registrations. It involves using a competition or giveaway to grow your first-party data pool.

By including competition details within product packaging, you can invite anyone who purchases one of your products to enter. In the online entry form, you could ask them to submit contact and demographic information. Going a step further and asking which is their favourite product or collection from your brand, or how they like to use your product, could help you unlock more value down the line.

Similarly to the previous examples, a CDP can collect this data and use it to build customer profiles and segments. This would allow you to create personalised follow-up campaigns – helping to increase engagement and retention.

Plus, using the analytics capabilities of a CDP, you would be able to analyse competition entry data to gain insights around the most engaged customer segments, as well as highlight any participation trends. This knowledge would be beneficial in helping you to optimise future competitions and improve return on investment.

To think about this strategy in action, let’s consider an alcohol brand who sells directly to consumers on its own Shopify store, as well as via retail partners in a range of brick-and-mortar stores. They are running a competition for anyone who purchases their gin taster gift set, with entry instructions included in the packaging. When entering the competition, customers are asked to provide their name and contact details, as well as select their favourite gin drink for celebrations.

The brand has a CDP implemented which will capture this information when it is submitted. Not only can this strategy help them expand their first-party data pool and learn about the types of consumers buying their products, but they can use the answers provided to curate relevant customer journeys for more than just their DTC shoppers.

For example, if someone selects a gin martini as their favourite drink, the brand can recommend products and share how-to content to help them make the perfect martini. This sort of carefully targeted interaction can make consumers feel special and valued, thereby building brand affinity and encouraging future purchases.

Example 4: Gated content access via packaging QR code

This final example of how to use a CDP to expand your first-party data can be widely applied across brands and industries.

Offering gated content to anyone purchasing one of your products (with download/access instructions on packaging), could be a great way to access more customer and unlock a larger owned audience.

For example, a food brand could include a QR code on product packaging that links to downloadable recipes. All end consumers, whether their route to purchase involves your ecommerce site or the supermarket, can access these recipes by completing a download form. Within the form, you could request contact and demographic information, as well as details of consumers’ food preferences.

Utilising this data within a CDP then enables more targeted marketing efforts to a larger cohort of consumers.

For instance, you could leverage preference data to build customer taste profiles, which would inform the type of offers, content and recommendations you send them in the future. This sort of hyper-personalised marketing is a key ingredient for repeat purchasing and increased retention.

CDP strategy & implementation with Swanky

As we’ve explored with the strategy examples in this article, a CDP could help you gather, interrogate and leverage valuable information from consumers who’ve purchased via a retail partner, rather than directly from your brand. You can use captured data to help improve acquisition, conversion and retention – driving significant growth for your business.

As an official Klaviyo partner, we can provide expert support in the implementation of Klaviyo CDP, with ongoing consultation and guidance to help bring strategies like these to life.

If you’d like to discuss CDP strategy and implementation in more detail, please reach out to our team who will be happy to continue the conversation with you.