Using zero-party data to create better e-commerce experiences

Today’s customers expect more from e-commerce brands: more personalization, more transparency, more data privacy. It’s why brands are increasingly turning to zero-party data (ZPD) as the pinnacle of customer data customer data, equipping e-commerce marketers with vital consumer insights to achieve laser-accurate personalization with explicit consent from customers.

ZPD isn’t just the collection of customer data—it’s a vital resource for forging brand loyalty and trust, prioritizing customer privacy, and providing customers with hyper-personalized experiences. We’re breaking down zero-party data’s role in e-commerce, why it’s essential for e-commerce campaigns, how to collect it, and what brands like yours can do with ZPD.

What is zero-party data in ecommerce?

Zero-party data refers to any information your audience willingly and intentionally shares about themselves. Think of it as conversational data—the information customers would reveal in a normal conversation with you.

With e-commerce, this could be customer details, purchase history, product feedback, or loyalty membership information. E-commerce brands frequently capture zero-party data about customer preferences—like how they want to be recognized and communicated with—to deliver more personalized experiences.Unlike second or third-party data, your audience provides zero-party data freely and directly, so it's the purest, most accurate form of data you can get—making it the most valuable. And since ZPD comes straight from the source, it can provide actionable insights instantly to help fine-tune your e-commerce marketing campaigns.

Other examples of zero-party data include:

• Product preferences: Discover your customers’ favorite colors, styles, and use cases—useful information that helps inform marketing, creative, and product decisions.

• Purchase intent: Learning more about your customers' plans for future purchases can help you better target these shoppers with tailored product recommendations and marketing campaigns (while helping you prepare for upcoming demand).

• Reviews and feedback: Improve your products by asking your audience directly about changes and updates they'd like to see. This also helps build trust with your customers—they'll see you value their opinions.

• Interests, hobbies, and habits: Use this information to uncover insights about how your customers use your products. This information can serve future campaigns, giving you archetypes and stories to weave into your marketing creative.

• E-commerce experience: Discover which points of your customer experience spark confusion or frustration so you can make improvements and ensure a frictionless shopping experience.

• Social media activity: Uncovering more about your audience's social media tendencies can tell you which platforms your customers prefer and help you find influencers who align with their preferences. 

When you engage your customers directly, you gain access to highly valuable, targeted information about your exact audience—not an implied or “lookalike” audience. 

This data can help you create better overall experiences for your customers… and e-commerce marketing campaigns that actually speak to them.

Why is it important to collect zero-party data for e-commerce campaigns?

It's simple, really: customers want more personalized e-commerce experiences and greater control over their data.

Many customers—especially Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z—are willing to exchange zero-party data for these personalized experiences.

But personalization isn't just about addressing your customers by name—it's about genuinely tailoring each customer's experience to their unique needs and preferences. Zero-party data unlocks these touchpoints, helps improve conversion rates, and fosters loyalty.

While personalization is overall a positive, there’s another consideration: privacy. As privacy concerns continue to grow, regulations change, and third-party cookies slowly disappear, ZPD meets compliance standards while putting consumers in control of how brands collect their data. 

Collecting zero-party data can reflect your brand's commitment to respecting customers and their privacy, strengthening your brand reputation, and building trust.

ZPD contrasts with many of the data collection methods we've grown used to. If you have a smartphone, you've likely experienced the "I was just talking to my friend about this product, and now I'm getting ads for it on Instagram" phenomenon. Consumers now know this isn't just a coincidence. 

Social media platforms and web browsers track everything users do:

• The websites they visit

• Terms they search for

• Items users purchase online

• Users' locations

• Likes, comments, interactions, sign-ins

And many users agree to all of it, quickly clicking "Accept" on the terms and conditions or pop-up standing between them and a shiny app or webpage to gain access to a brand's content or tools.

But what data gets captured isn't clear anymore. More and more users want their privacy back—they’re demanding more from the companies that gather their data.

Instead of tracking cookies and pixels, brands need to shift to transparently collecting consumer data—directly from ‌customers. Consumers crave personalization, but they also want control over what they give up to get it. Zero-party data gives them this control while helping you capture essential information to tailor their e-commerce experiences.

E-commerce and B2C marketing strategies leveraging ZPD can eliminate the "creepiness" users have felt from brands leveraging second and third-party cookies.

It's far less surprising to see product recommendations in your inbox or social feed if you know you've given your favorite brands access to your preferences. It also helps to relieve the personalization and privacy paradox, which has long been a source of frustration for both brands and consumers.

How e-commerce brands can collect zero-party data

How e-commerce brands collect zero-party data can impact the level of information consumers willingly share. It should align with your brand's overall content and marketing strategy. More importantly, it should effectively engage consumers while blending seamlessly into their e-commerce experience. Here's how.

1. Get more zero-party data with a pre- or post-purchase survey

A pre-purchase survey tells you more about what your customers are looking for and how they want to spend their money. Post-purchase surveys provide insights into your customers’ decision-making process and connection to your brand.

These surveys help you learn about customer preferences, habits, interests, shopping and technical experiences, pain points, and referrals (what led them to your brand). All of these help you develop or improve products and determine whether you have the right product-market fit.

Pro tip: When creating a survey, think of it as another strategic element in your overall e-commerce campaign. Consider the timing, content, design, and length of the survey.

Let’s say you’re including a survey on a post-purchase thank you page. Ask customers about their buying experience and keep it brief (one or two questions).

If you send a survey via email a week or more post-purchase, you can get more in-depth with specific product questions. But always remember to respect your customers' time.

2. Create interactive experiences that deliver insightful zero-party data

Interactive experiences include forms, quizzes, and polls designed to engage your audience and encourage them to share data in a fun, creative way. One of the most popular interactive techniques for collecting zero-party data is a product recommendation quiz.

Quizzes lead customers to the right product while gathering their contact information, preferences, interests, and needs. 

Have multiple products that cater to different personal styles, pain points, or preferences? A recommendation quiz is a great way to get zero-party data while connecting your customers to the items they’ll love most.

These are especially useful for e-commerce brands that can link directly to the product(s) in the quiz results.

When designed well, forms, quizzes, and polls can help you deliver immediate value through personalized results and suggestions. And the information you gather will let you personalize their experience in future marketing.

But remember, you need to be strategic about the questions you ask and how you present them to collect rich ZPD you can actually use for campaigns.

3. Host giveaways or contests

Using a giveaway or contest strategy requires a small investment—you’ll need a prize to give away to winners. But everyone likes free stuff and winning, especially if the barrier to entry is relatively low.

Ask customers (or potential customers) to share their names, email addresses, and other relevant zero-party data to win one of your products. This can help you collect insightful target audience data and increase customer engagement. You can even ask customers to share the link to your giveaway or contest for an extra entry. 

4. Let customers manage their profiles and preferences

User profiles and preference pages are dedicated places where customers can opt in and customize their:

• Personal information

• Interests

• Needs

• Expectations

When building your preference center, align your questions/fields with your brand—and if you don’t need the information to give customers a great experience, don’t ask for it right away.

For example, if you represent a clothing company, asking for a customer’s size and style preference up front is crucial—their social media profile links aren’t.

Beyond asking for a name and email address (or phone number if you have an SMS text opt-in), stick to a two-question max. You don’t want to lose customers before you really have them.

Implementing an A/B or split test may be helpful here. It'll tell you if the quantity or quality of questions is causing you to lose users. It may be most beneficial to have a multi-step user profile process that collects the most pertinent zero-party data first and more detailed customer information in a follow-up form.

Customer profiles and preference centers let your audience share zero-party data like:

• Contact information

• Demographic information

• Communication channel preference (email, text, social media)

• Communication frequency preference (daily, weekly, monthly)

• Content preference (blog posts, deals or sales, product launches)

5. Send conversational pop-ups and texts

Conversational pop-ups and text messages let you reach customers where they are. As visitors navigate your e-commerce website, you can use pop-ups to guide them along their shopping journey and use their actions to determine the message they receive.

By leveraging customer browsing history and zero-party data, you can introduce pop-ups that ask specific questions or provide recommendations for unique products they've shown interest in. Not only does this help your customers find what they're looking for, but it also allows you to store that information for future personalization.

Sending texts to your customers? If so, they’ve already opted in for brand communications and have given you some of their data. You can take this a step further and gather more information by texting links to surveys, quizzes, and other zero-party data collection techniques.

6. Encourage customer feedback and reviews

Customer reviews help you identify both the selling and pain points related to your products. That feedback lets you zero in on what they like best about your brand offerings and yields valuable insights about what may be hindering sales.

If you sell cosmetics and a customer writes a review of a lipstick they didn’t like, there are a few ways it could help you:

• The customer didn’t like the lipstick color: this is a personal preference, and you can use this information to adjust future product recommendations.

• The customer didn’t like the lipstick product itself: this may be a personal preference, so you’ll need to look at other reviews to determine this—if it’s ‌common opinion, you may want to consider reformulating.

As your product reviews increase, so will your brand’s trustworthiness. One low-touch way to encourage customer reviews is by adding a call-to-action on relevant product pages.

7. Develop a loyalty program

Loyalty programs are one of the most effective means of collecting zero-party data because they offer customers value—like discounts and free products—in exchange for their information.

When customers sign up for your brand’s loyalty program, they typically share their name, preferred contact method, and birthday so you can offer them rewards and other benefits. The bonus? Seven in 10 U.S. consumers consider these programs a leading reason they’re loyal to specific brands. 

Loyalty programs also provide a channel to use the ZPD you've collected to offer customers rewards they actually want. Giving them what they want can help create an emotional connection that facilitates even more allegiance to your brand.

What can e-commerce brands do with zero-party data?

Brands can use ZPD to inform their overall e-commerce marketing strategies, giving customers a holistic, personalized experience that truly resonates with them at every point in the customer journey.

When you’re transparent about how you collect zero-party data and let your customers know how you intend to use their data, you can develop a mutually beneficial relationship and enhanced e-commerce experience.

Speak to customers directly

Beyond addressing customers by name, you can make customers feel like you’re speaking directly to them by sharing the products, content, and information they want and need.

Talk to customers through personalized newsletters that highlight products or related content they’re interested in or targeted messages through their preferred communication channels.

Provide recommendations customers actually want

Product recommendations are one of the most effective ways to use zero-party data. You can tailor what you suggest based on data you collect with quizzes and surveys or share direct messages related to products customers have previously purchased.

For example, if a customer has purchased an industrial flashlight from your outdoor supply website, you might consider recommending rechargeable batteries in your next marketing message.

Personalize advertising and e-commerce marketing efforts

When analyzing zero-party data, you’ll discover insights that can lead to a specific type of creative or unique messaging opportunity. You might find that most of your customers are located in a particular area or share similar interests. 

You can use this information in your e-commerce campaign’s creative by leading with regional phrasing, recognizable landmarks, or relatable personas. 

Offer segmented promotions

By collecting information about customers’ behaviors and preferences, you can segment your audience and create highly targeted promotions that drive higher engagement and conversions.

Segmenting customers allows you to hone in on the products and messaging you know a certain audience will love while making each customer feel like you’ve sent them an offer created specifically for them.

Discover unique product uses and characteristics

Product reviews provide specific feedback about how your customers are using your products—use this to guide marketing and messaging.

You may discover brand-new product use cases and characteristics you hadn’t even considered.

Innovate products

Zero-party data is a great tool if your brand provides many varieties of one base product, like flavors of a protein shake or different roasts of coffee. Maybe you focus on developing and promoting the products your internal team thinks are popular. But until you poll your audience directly, you might miss out on big opportunities. 

Customers' zero-party data can lead your brand down completely new paths or help you tweak your existing products to fit customers' preferences better.

Zero-party data: the key to true e-commerce success 

Zero-party data isn’t just information—it’s a goldmine of pure audience insights that can help you create long-lasting customer relationships and more effective e-commerce campaigns.

In the ever-evolving world of digital marketing—where authenticity and user privacy are paramount—zero-party data serves as a beacon of trust for both customers and e-commerce brands. And it starts with getting that data straight from your customers.

Not sure where to begin your ZPD journey? Check out Typeform’s tools for building forms, creating quizzes, and designing surveys that'll engage your customers and inspire them to share more and better data with you.