Marketers know that targeted campaigns with relevant messaging perform better and drive higher-quality leads. That’s why we use data to segment our audiences and personalize the messaging accordingly.
But not all data is created equal. Third-party data, while valuable for understanding attribution and cross-site analytics, is typically aggregated from many sources and built on inferences. It still has an important role to play, but its accuracy and reliability is far from foolproof.
When it comes to powering personalized campaigns, the most impactful data comes directly from your customers — and tells you something meaningful about who they are and what they care about.
Here’s how you can collect rich, first-party data to engage customers with deeper and more effective campaigns.
Go Beyond Basic Segmentation
Personalized campaigns are only as effective as your audience segments. The more granular your segments, the more precisely you can target your messaging and offers.
Basic demographic data like zip code, age, and gender provides a starting point, but only scratches the surface. These broad markers might help you adjust product recommendations or headlines, but they don’t give you enough insight to craft truly personalized content that forges emotional connections with customers.
And if you’re working with aggregated third-party sources versus receiving the data directly from the consumer, you’re limited to making educated guesses based on past behaviors.
Creating meaningful segments that reflect your customers’ values and motivations requires a deeper understanding of who they are. And a great place to start is to identify the communities they belong to.
Find Deeper Meaning in Consumer Communities
When your audience members share details about their lives — their professions, life stages, or community affiliations — you gather valuable first-party data that unlocks opportunities for meaningful segmentation and truly resonant messaging.
For consumer communities like teachers, students, or the military, that insight can help you establish a powerful emotional connection. In a recent survey of over 3,000 US and UK consumers, 80% of members identify more strongly with their community than their age group, political affiliation, or where they live.
These consumer communities also tend to share distinct values, interests, and purchasing patterns. Broadly speaking:
- Military members often prioritize physical health and fitness.
- Teachers tend to love learning.
- Nurses report dealing with higher levels of stress and burnout.
- Students are interested in technology.
Brands can lean into these natural affinities when marketing to these communities. For example, ThriftBooks has a special loyalty program for teachers while CheapCaribbean offers all-inclusive “ER&R Club” deals for healthcare workers in dire need of vacations.
Knowing what groups your buyers belong to enables sophisticated targeting that goes well beyond basic segmentation.
Use Exclusive Offers to Get Verified, Relevant Data
Today’s buyers are hesitant to share personal information without knowing they’ll get something for it. Exclusive offers are that motivating force.
By extending an exclusive discount to a consumer community and verifying their eligibility for it, you create a transparent value exchange that:
- Attracts new customers.
- Demonstrates appreciation for their group.
- Gives you valuable first-party data.
Customers will happily share their data to redeem an exclusive offer. And the high quality data you receive is ideal for segmentation because it gives you meaningful insights you can use to engage them.
Take American Giant’s strategy: the clothing retailer reinforces its made-in-the-USA ethos by offering a 20% discount for the military community. Targeting this group is highly effective. Their military email promotions are their best performing.
When you know which community a consumer belongs to, you can engage them with relevant and precisely timed campaigns. Students will welcome a discount during back-to-school season, and many communities are celebrated during special appreciation weeks or days throughout the year.
Build Lookalike Audiences to Expand Your Reach to Relevant Leads
The first-party customer data you collect from verified community offers also enables highly efficient customer acquisition. You can stream it to your Martech stack and then use your CRM, CDP, or ad partners to create lookalike audiences that share key traits with those customers. Running a campaign that targets these lookalike audiences allows you to effectively engage high-value leads because you already know your offer and messaging has driven conversions.
Consider direct-to-consumer mattress brand Purple’s success story: their military discount program led to a 6x increase in conversions and a 25:1 return on ad spend (ROAS). The marketing team used that data to create lookalike audiences on Facebook, driving even more leads and sales. Within weeks, Purple’s personalized offer programs grew to account for 10-15% of all online revenue.
As you gather additional insights through post-purchase surveys and loyalty programs, you can continually enrich your database. This creates a virtuous cycle: better data leads to more precise segmentation, which drives more relevant leads and builds stronger customer relationships.
Over time, collecting and leveraging verified community data will enhance your segmentation strategy, generate more relevant leads, and drive deeper customer loyalty and lifetime value.
