13 Types of Essential Marketing Data and What They Can Do For You

Marketing and communications are in a rapid pace of ongoing transformation. The ability to track media, channel, and device consumption has never been greater. Marketers can now track and identify consumers across some offline and nearly all online behavior. They key to all of this? Marketing data. The immense amount of data available to marketers is growing more and more useful in the digital age. As marketing decisions become more complex and with shorter horizons, big data and other analytics capabilities become faster, more efficient, and more affordable for small businesses as well as enterprises. To help marketers make use of the data at their fingertips, we have broken down the various types of marketing data and how each can help your business.

First-Party Data is consumer information that a company collects itself – or in other words, “owns.” This type of data may include demographic information, email addresses, purchase history, and more. First-party data is specific to a company’s existing consumers, which allows marketers to create highly personalized customer experiences.

Second-Party Data is data owned by one organization that is sold directly to another, for the second organization’s exclusive use – it’s not “off-the-shelf.” It is a one-on-one exclusive relationship, where a buyer goes to the seller and brokers a relationship to access that data for a particular use in a campaign. By sourcing second-party data, businesses can understand exactly how that data has been collected, and know how consent has been obtained from the customer. This allows for a lot more trust in the transparency of the data.

Third-Party Data is data that you buy from outside sources that are not the original collectors of that data. Instead, you buy it from large data aggregators that pull it from various other platforms and websites where it was generated. Essentially, these aggregators pay publishers and other data owners for their first-party data, collect it into one large data set, and sell it as third-party data. These data sets are organized based on categories like industry, audience behaviors and interests, and demographic characteristics such as age and gender. Each category is then broken down into specific segments, and the buyer chooses which segment works best for them.

Small Data vs. Big Data

Small Data is structured data. This is rows and columns of data, such as that in a relational database. It is easily searchable as fields are alphabetical or numeric and have a predefined data model that can be followed. This type of data is characterized by low volumes, batch velocities, and structured varieties.

Big Data adds unstructured data. This data is not as easily searchable, including formats like audio, video, images and social media postings. There is no predefined data model that is being followed. Big data is characterized by large volumes, real-time velocities, and multi structured varieties.

Specific Types of Marketing Data

Personal data may include a name, address, email address, phone number, site interaction and purchase data. This type of data is also known as Personally Identifiable Information (PII).

Demographic data is information such as age, income, household composition and occupation. This is often used as a cornerstone for creating target audiences. 

Psychographic (lifestyle) data includes your values, attitudes, personal interests and personality traits. Marketers can find out if you are a thrill seeker, eco-friendly, take cruises, love cats, prefer to ski or snowboard and much more.

Business Data is information about a business may include the industry, location, size, business structure, number of employees and performance.

Geolocation-based data is app location user data collected from location data providers (Google Maps).

Transactional data can be some of the most helpful information to marketers. It includes online/offline purchases, invoices, payment methods, returns, investments, payroll, memberships, donations and pretty much anything else having to do with money online.

Website or in-app data shows exactly where and when you spend your time online. It records the number of site visits, number of pages or screens viewed, time spent on a website or app, time since last visit, videos viewed and much more.

Campaign engagement behavioral data is created by actions taken in response to a campaign across media channels. It includes email opens and/or clicks, push notification dismissals or clickthroughs, personalized experience views and clickthroughs, as well as the device and time of day the above occurred.

If you want to learn more about how you can use these types of data to boost your digital marketing efficiency, contact J&C — experts in the science and the art of customer engagement.