How to Harness the Power of AI with First-Party Data for Your Next Campaign

The state of digital marketing today couldn’t look more different from a decade ago, when Google Search was considered king and third-party cookies were widely used and relied upon by marketers. As data privacy regulations increased and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies advanced over the years, it became harder to know which platform to turn to or how to find the right audiences to target for campaigns. While Google ended up reversing its course to make third-party cookie blocking default, it became clear to many marketers that they would need to shift strategies to keep up. With zero-click search growing, it is now critical for companies to start owning the data themselves.

In an increasingly cookie-less digital ecosystem, collecting your own first-party data has become more valuable. Most companies will already have the basics: some demographic information, record of transactions, multi-channel correspondence, customer feedback. But there are a great deal more interactions and engagements that can be harnessed, from social media messages and chatbot histories to event registrations and CRM data. Even certain behaviors that can be observed on your website’s analytics can give you first-party insight into how audiences want to be served and when. What’s key is that you own this data that your customers have provided, making it easier to understand better how to continue engaging with them and hopefully continue to attract leads.

Where the power of AI can come in

Marketing organizations may even find they have almost too much data in their tech stack to reckon with and not enough manpower to understand what it all means. Imagine setting a dedicated personal assistant to your troves of data across CRM systems, email platforms, content repositories and more, giving you the most valuable insights or the most revenue-driven direction to follow — that can be where AI steps in to help change the game.

An example of how AI can elevate the value of first-party data is Personif.ai, an AI-driven real-time platform that helps marketers avoid the traditional constraints of audience selection and display ad creation by delivering customer messaging to ideal prospects across numerous EndeavorB2B media sites. The proprietary AI model analyzes content provided by the marketer to understand the topic and target, then dynamically deploys that content based on audience observations and behavioral signals it has collected. Organizations that combine high-quality first-party data with AI see more precise targeting, higher ROI on campaign investments and faster execution.

Areas where AI creates leverage

From insights to action, AI can add significant value to campaigns based on first-party data. For example, Personif.ai’s audience modeling and predictive targeting can steer messaging to prospects based on high-value customer patterns, complementing traditional insertion campaigns where media buyers must actively keep up with where their targets are consuming content. The platform also allows for personalization at scale, with generative AI being used to create variations of email and landing page messaging.

Another area where AI can assist marketing teams is real-time campaign optimization and measurement, ensuring adjustments can be made at any point to budgets and placements so content can be served at the right time to the right audience, sometimes even at the right stage in the pipeline. Automated email follow-ups take into account each user’s interest and behavior to deliver relevant industry insights and further nurture them down the funnel.

Building a foundation with first-party data

As the saying goes, what goes in is what comes out — or in this case, the quality of the first-party data that is leveraged for AI is going to be the quality of what the AI produces. To best leverage first-party data for marketing and AI, companies will need to practice data hygiene and review databases to avoid inaccurate data points, such as duplicate customer names, misspelled names or now-defunct email addresses. Unifying data from disparate systems will also help ensure companies have a clear view of how its first-party data comes together and reveals insights about customers and products.

AI will only be as strong as the data it’s trained on, so marketers will need to work with IT and security to ensure first-party data is protected and that consent for communications can be tracked.

The applications for amplifying marketing campaigns with AI and first-party data are numerous. From demand gen campaigns to lead nurturing and content personalization, marketing teams can improve their tactics and support overall initiatives with AI-powered workflows. For example, marketers can:

• Use AI clustering to identify micro-segments based on needs, budget or stage
• Deploy AI models that determine the next course of action in the campaign, whether it’s sending a specific email, offer, retargeting or sales outreach
• Tailor dynamic content recommendations, from form factor to topic
• Run AI simulations to forecast performance and likely ROI ranges

As always, it is also essential to remember to treat AI as a tool requiring supervision. Without a concrete strategy or human oversight to ensure everything works as intended, it can be easy to fall into a routine of over-reliance or scaling too fast instead of focusing on accuracy or data compliance. With first-party data, your team’s competitive edge is already in your hands.