Party Data: Zero, First, Second, And Third-Party Data
For any business, data is an invaluable asset. However, how the data is acquired has a major role in its usefulness. Data can be categorized as party data, wherein the party represents the data source. Most commonly, there are three categories of data: first-party, second-party, and third-party. However, there’s also a fourth type called zero-party data.
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In this post, you’ll learn the difference between these different categories of data and how each can help with marketing. You’ll also learn about Scraping Robot and how it can be a game-changer for your data needs.
Data can offer your business advantage if you know how to use it. So, it’s essential to understand which kinds of data you have at your disposal.
What Is First-Party Data?
First-party data can be any data you collect directly from your audience or customers. For example, this can be the information they provide while using your product or service. It can also be information you gain through surveys, feedback, complaints, or your customer relationship management (CRM) software.
Behavior data also falls into this category. This kind of data comprises information about audience interaction with your website, email, or another service you use for your business that collects user data (for example, a SaaS).
So what is 1st-party data? In short, first-party data is the data that the company collects from the customers or audience firsthand.
How to collect first-party data
There are various ways to collect first-party data, depending on where the data comes from.
In most cases, CRM is the primary method of collecting and sorting customer data. CRM can accumulate information from subscriptions, surveys, and social media. There are also more advanced techniques for collecting data about user behavior. For example, with the help of pixels on your website, social media, or software, you can collect data about how the customer engages.
For instance, you can collect information about how much time a user spent on the website, where on the website they spent the most time, and what pages they ignored.
What Is Second-Party Data?
Second-party data is collected and shared by another party. It’s the data related to your business or perhaps comes from your audience but wasn’t directly collected by you.
The information itself is like first-party data because customers directly provide it. However, the way it is obtained is different.
2nd-party data examples include resellers collecting data for you. For example, you partner with another company to sell your products. They share the information they collected from the customers to help you make the product better. You didn’t collect the data yourself in this scenario, but your customers provided it.
So what is 2nd-party data? In the simplest terms, second-party data is first-party data obtained from another party.
How to collect second-party data
The methods of collecting this data are the same as first-party data. They range from collecting feedback to tracking user activity.
A business can collect second-party data by partnering with the party collecting that data. For example, it could be a partner or another organization. Typically, companies share their firsthand data if they see a mutual benefit.
In most cases, however, you must pay for the secondhand data.
What Is Third-Party Data?
Third-party data is aggregate data collected from various sources and sold to businesses. The party selling the data may have collected it firsthand. However, more often, buy data from those who have collected it and aggregate it to create big data. In other words, this is more generalized data. Unlike first-party or second-party data, it may not come directly from your audience.
So what is 3rd-party data? In short, third-party data is aggregate data from different sources collected and sold by another company.
How to collect third-party data
Businesses can buy third-party data from other companies that sell data. These companies, in turn, purchase and collect data from various sources. For instance, they might buy data directly from businesses in a specific niche that have collected firsthand data from their customers.
The original methods for collecting this data are the same as first-party data. However, the data’s relevancy to the business is questionable because the data does not come from actual or potential customers.
Most third-party data is collected randomly, which decreases its accuracy and relevancy.
What Is Zero-Party Data?
Zero-party data is a relatively new term for a subset of first-party data, coined by Forrester Research. They define it as data that customers proactively share with a business. It includes information that customers willingly provide about their preferences or intentions.
Consent is a big differentiator between zero-party data and other types of data. While most first-party data is collected with consent, all zero-party data comes with exclusive customer consent.
How To Use Party Data for Marketing
Most businesses collect or buy data for marketing or advertising. However, the type of data you have ultimately affects the marketing strategy. Not all data may be helpful, and not all data may have the same impact.
First-party data may be the most valuable for marketers. So, why is first-party data important?
- First-party data comes directly from your customers or would-be customers.
- It’s much more detailed than third-party data, which is often essential.
- It’s collected with the consent of the users.
- It can help make marketing more focused and personalized.
- It can give you product or service feedback directly from the users.
That said, there are limitations in how to use first-party data. Scale is where it loses to third-party data. Collecting data directly from your audience is a painstakingly slow and resource-intensive process. Plus, depending on the size of your business, you may not have much data to work with.
However, companies can augment first- or second-party data with third-party data to bring in more data for analysis.
So, how can you use first-party data for marketing?
- Personalize marketing: The most significant benefit of first- and second-party data (also zero-party) is that it can help you personalize your marketing efforts to suit audience preferences.
- Target new audiences: First-party data is beneficial for expanding outreach and targeting potential customers.
- Learn user behavior: Data about user activity and behavior can help you improve the overall user experience and is best collected firsthand.
- Predict trends and patterns: With high accuracy, first-party data can help predict future trends and discover patterns.
Web Scraping To Collect Party Data
By now, you know that first-party customer data is the most reliable and accurate for marketing. However, it doesn’t have the scale in its favor, as in many cases, the data is limited in volume.
What if you could leverage the benefits of both first-party and third-party data? While you may consider buying third-party data, a more reliable way would be to collect that data yourself.
Web scraping can help you collect more data than you would firsthand or secondhand. For example, rather than purchasing data from data collection companies, you can collect data from competitor websites or other websites that are somehow relevant to your business.
Similarly, you can also scrape data from social media, especially when expanding your audience. Unlike data bought from third parties, this data will likely be more relevant and accurate.
But manually scraping the web is simply impossible. Instead, you need a reliable scraping bot that can do all the search and collect for you in a short timeframe.
Best web scraper
Scraping Robot is one of the best solutions for scraping websites for data safely and reliably. This software can help you increase your data arsenal and learn critical information about competitors and your customers in your industry. Data or web scraping is the gathering & organizing of information from the internet. With our automated process, we can pool large amounts of information from the internet and organize it, making it usable for your business. We have a dedicated support system and 24/7 customer assistance for you!
With Scraping Robot, you no longer have to worry about all the headaches that come with scraping, like proxy management and rotation, server management, browser scalability, CAPTCHA solving, and looking out for new anti-scraping updates from target websites. We manage all this so you can focus on what matters most: getting valuable party data!
There are no hidden fees, monthly costs, or complicated pricing tiers. Not sure how many scrapes you need? Just let us know the size of your party data-collection project, and we’ll help you find the most affordable option for your use case.
You can pair the Scraping Robot with Rayobyte proxies to set up a foolproof data-scraping operation and collect your party data instead of relying on other third parties.
Final Words: Collect and Use Party Data to Your Advantage
Party data (zero, first, second, or third) can determine the quality and capability of the data you gather. Party data can be beneficial, but some more than others in certain business situations. First-party data is a winner when it comes to accuracy and relevancy. However, third-party data beats first-party and second-party data in volume and scale.
Innovative businesses can collect these different types of data from their audience and leverage data elsewhere with technologies like a web scraping robot. After all, data — and how you use it — can make or break your next marketing plans. Reach out to Scraping Robot today!
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