Data collection is essential for marketing. It helps marketers to find their target audience and create more personalised offers. By doing so, they can optimise their advertising campaign budgets.
Data collection is also important for SMS marketing. Although SMS is one of the cheapest ways to advertise, data collection can help you to target your messages more precisely. This is always desirable, as spending your budget advertising to clients who aren’t interested in your product or service is never the best option. The collection of client data should be approached responsibly. Almost all countries have laws and regulations that monitor the legality of advertising. It is never a good idea to target an audience using data which have been collected secretly.
What data can be collected, and how? You can read about the legal aspects of data collection in our blog.
Let’s now talk in more detail about what kinds of data there are and why businesses need them. There are three types; 1st, 2nd and 3rd party data. Their distinguishing features are whether or not they are unique, and the methods by which they were gathered.
1st party data
1st party data have been collected by companies themselves. This may be data from registration, questionnaires, surveys, CRM, etc. This includes information such as clients’ ages, phone numbers, emails, order information, feedback, behaviour logs and info about time spent on websites or applications.
1st party data are required to help analyse the true needs of clients and offer them products that are likely to be bought. This information also helps to personalise offers and content for clients, launch ads and retargeting campaigns and predict customer behaviour.
The advantage of these data is, of course, that they’re free. Moreover, such data will be unique, since competitors don’t have access to your company’s information.
The downside is that there may not be enough data to produce a complete picture of clients, or to extrapolate to other fields of business.
2nd party data
2nd party data are essentially the same 1st party data, except for that they are collected by your partners rather than by your company itself. You can buy them, or exchange them for your own data. Of course, clients must first be notified about this and give their consent.
This method is suitable for supplementing your primary data. 2nd party data will point to problems in the sales funnel. They are also used to scale a business and find a new target audience. For example, if you decide to expand your business and sell goods not only for children, but also for an adult audience, you will be helped by 2nd party data collected by your partners who have a business in a similar niche to your own.
However, you shouldn’t completely trust 2nd party data. After all, you don’t know how and when the data were collected, or how accurate they are. In fact, when buying this type of data, you just have to trust the seller.
3rd party data
3rd party data is different from the first two types. Firstly, it is data that have been collected by aggregators such as mobile operators or social media. Secondly, it is data that are collected from several sources.
Vendors of 3rd party data collect information and segment it into search categories according to industry, interest, and so on. 3rd party data allows for a wider reach, with larger samples than first and second level data.
This type of data is suitable for use in preparations for the launch of advertising campaigns to new audiences and tracking global trends.
The main advantage of 3rd party data is they can provide large volumes of fresh, relevant information, which allows you to quickly change marketing strategies if necessary.
The downside is that this information is also available to your competitors. Another disadvantage that you may encounter is unscrupulous aggregators that sell client data which has been illegally collected.
Data collection is an important part of any advertising campaign and marketing strategy. The success of sales can depend on what data you collect and how.
However, whatever method of data collection you choose, you can use it when creating SMS mail-outs on the Intis Telecom platform. Here you will find many solutions and tools that will help you create advertising SMS text messages specifically for your target audience. You just need to register for free in your personal account and start your advertising campaign.
