Register for the webinar here!
An intriguing new concept is circulating the loyalty industry right now: declared data. Declared data differs from first-party data in that the latter creates insights through inference. That is, a brand analyzes a customer’s behavioral and transactional data and makes deductions about that customer. Declared data, on the other hand, involves getting information directly from the customer by asking her what she wants. On October 22, representatives from Pour Moi Skincare and Jebbit will join Loyalty360 in a webinar to discuss this topic. Those interested can register for the webinar here.
In addition, we recently spoke with these representatives, Ulli Haslacher, President & Co-Founder of Pour Moi Skincare, and Ben Cockerell, Vice President of Marketing at Jebbit, to understand declared data more fully. Their companies have collaborated to use declared data to drive personalization for Pour Moi’s customer base.
Please give us a little background on Pour Moi Skincare.
Haslacher: Pour Moi Skincare sprang from the idea that the most important factor in determining how we should care for our skin isn’t our age or our skin type, but the climate we’re in. Our offerings are designed to help skin balance with your climate because climates change during season changes, weather patterns, and travel.
How did you decide to go in the direction of education and data collection?
Haslacher: Education was an immediate and obvious priority because we’re bucking the conventional wisdom on how you should care for your skin. Skincare is intensely personal, and it takes a lot for someone to be convinced they should try a new approach. We have to keep telling this story again and again until people believe us.
The other priority, data collection, also stems from the fact that skincare is personal. In this case, for us to recommend the right products to people, we need to understand where they live, where they travel to, etc.
Declared data—that’s a newer term for some of us. Would you please describe what that is?
Cockerell: Declared data is information that is actively volunteered by a consumer to a brand. You may also hear the term “zero-party data,” which Forrester has been popularizing, to describe the same thing. Declared data can be identifying information, but it can also capture things like motivations, interests, preferences, etc.
Why is declared data important and how does it differ from other data sources?
Cockerell: Declared data is a type of first-party data, which means that it is generated from a direct interaction between a brand and a consumer (compare this to third-party data, which is purchased or rented from another source). Normally when we talk about first-party data, we are referring to behavioral data (the actions a consumer takes) or transactional data (the items a consumer bought). It’s passive data collection. Declared data is explicitly offered—we know what a consumer wants not because we’re looking at the pages she browsed on our site and guessing but because she told us what she wants.
Does using declared data warrant stronger returns of marketing efforts? If so, how?
Cockerell: Declared data allows marketers to segment their audience with much greater accuracy and create personalized messaging based on what a consumer tells you they want, rather than guessing about what they want. That confidence in your personalization really matters. Not long ago, Accenture estimated that the cost to US businesses of consumers switching brands due to bad personalization was $756 billion annually. When you layer in the data privacy piece and consider the tide of legislation making it harder to rely on third-party data, explicit and transparent data collection becomes even more of an imperative.