First-Party Data Activation: Modernize your marketing data platform

Learn the modern approach to data for digital marketing used by the world’s leading brands to drive amazing, compound growth with transparency, privacy compliance, and data-driven personalization.

First Party Data Activation shows you how to transform general user data into a deep understanding of who your customers are, what resonates with them, and where to focus your marketing efforts. You’ll discover how to effectively collect, analyze, and act on data from direct customer interactions to drive consistent, incremental growth– all with your user’s consent.

Gone are the days when “batch and blast” email campaigns could be sent with abandon to drive results. Consumer expectations, promotional inboxes, and privacy regulations have forced marketing teams to level up targeting and personalization efforts. Organizations with a deep well of data and insights on their customer base have the competitive upper hand. Major transitions in browser tracking and the need to reach consumers with consistent and relevant messaging across an ever-increasing set of channels make this a critical moment to reexamine old assumptions. This book helps marketers to meet those challenges using a new, data-first approach focused on a single view of each customer available to all of an organization’s marketing tools and teams.

In First Party Data Activation you will learn how to:

• Transition away from cookies and third-party tracking tools
• Modernize your marketing technology with data lakehouses and composable CDPs
• Build sustainable and privacy-compliant data collection strategies
• Hyper-personalize your messaging using generative AI and data clean rooms
• Embed transparency, consent, and data ethics in your marketing process
• Drive faster marketing operations to achieve higher growth for your company

Anyone involved in digital marketing or the support of digital marketing will benefit from this book. Digital marketing leaders will find in this book a recipe for the future that breaks away from tool-based thinking and moves toward a unified view and approach to each customer. Data Scientists and Data Engineers will benefit from understanding the technical concepts and concerns such as data lakehouses, customer data platforms (CDPs), and data privacy that matter to the marketing clients whom they are serving. The information provided offers valuable insights into how technical infrastructure supports modern marketing strategies, bridging the gap between IT and marketing domains.

In a rapidly-evolving digital ecosystem, marketers who rely on outdated approaches like third-party cookie collection risk falling behind their competitors. First Party Data Activation teaches you to build a modern marketing strategy that’s based on first-party data—the data freely given through login events, page views, product clicks, payment info, and more. You’ll utilize technologies like composable customer data platforms (CDPs), data lakehouses, data clean rooms, and generative AI to improve your targeting and personalization, all while ensuring data is handled to the highest privacy standards.

Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF and ePub formats from Manning Publications.

About the book

First Party Data Activation is a comprehensive guide to collecting, storing, and using first-party data for effective digital marketing. The book focuses on building customer trust by putting privacy at the heart of your marketing strategy. It presents a clear and actionable framework to rearchitect how you collect and store data, and how you turn it into results. You’ll learn how to make best use of new technologies—including generative AI and identity resolution—and drive change across teams as you update the way you market. Each new idea is illustrated with insightful real-world case studies, such as the Boston Red Sox’s use of audience segmentation and Indeed’s data-driven customer re-engagement campaigns?.

About the reader

For marketing leaders who want to develop strategies to maximize the potential of their first-party data to drive more effective, more repeatable growth across all marketing channels. For data scientists and data engineers who work in support marketing efforts and want to bring more value by understanding the challenges faced by their clients and the direction in which digital marketing trends are heading.

About the author

Alina D. Magauova is the founder of Segment360, a brand strategist and a product marketing leader who has worked with Fortune 500 and Global 500 companies across Asia, Europe, and North America.

Oscar Kennis is the founder of OPSangels Inc. He has over 18 years of experience in the technology sector.

David H. Joosten is the co-founder of GrowthLoop and a former Google marketer who has advised companies including Indeed, Priceline, and Google on their first-party data strategy.