Episode 4 - It All Comes From the Data: Collect It, Use It, Build On It

Strip away the jargon and every engagement strategy rests on one thing. Data. No data, no personalisation. No measurement. No learning. It is the fuel for all of it.

That makes data strategy the least glamorous and most important part of the job. Get it right and everything downstream gets easier. Get it wrong and no amount of clever tactics will save you — you'll be guessing at scale, and calling it a strategy.

Own your data, because the borrowed kind is fading

There's a lazy version of this argument — “third-party cookies are dying, panic now” — and it's out of date. In April 2025 Google confirmed it would not deprecate third-party cookies in Chrome after all. The deadline everyone braced for simply vanished.

But the direction of travel didn't. Safari and Firefox already block third-party cookies by default. Users delete and reject them in growing numbers. Their effectiveness keeps eroding whatever Google does. The smart response was never to wait for a deadline — it was to build an asset you own outright: first- and zero-party data. The brands that treated the deadline as the reason to act are now exposed; the ones who understood the direction are already ahead.

First-party data is what customers do — purchases, visits, clicks, service history. Zero-party data is what they tell you directly — preferences, intentions, the reason they're shopping. The second kind is gold, because it's freely given and impossible for a competitor to buy.

Run it as a loop, not a warehouse

Most brands treat data as storage. Collect it, put it somewhere, occasionally query it. The brands that win treat it as a loop: collect, use, build.

• Collect with intent. Every field you capture should have a job. If you won't use it, don't ask for it.

• Use it visibly. Turn data into relevance the customer can feel — a better recommendation, a more relevant offer, a smoother journey.

• Build on it. Feed every interaction back into the profile so the next experience is sharper than the last.

Data isn't an asset because you hold it. It's an asset because it compounds every time you use it well.

The compounding is the whole point. A brand that closes the loop gets smarter with every interaction, while a brand that only stores data gets a bigger warehouse and no more insight. Over a year, that gap becomes a moat.

The value exchange is non-negotiable

Customers will share data — but only for something in return, and only if they trust you with it. McKinsey found 85% of consumers say understanding a company's privacy approach matters before they buy, and nearly half would switch brands if a privacy policy is unclear. Ask for everything up front and you'll get abandonment. Ask for a little, use it well, and earn the right to ask for more.

This is where zero-party data earns its keep. A short preference question, a style quiz, a “what are you shopping for?” prompt — each is a small, fair trade. Beauty and wine retailers do this especially well: a two-minute quiz that returns a genuinely tailored recommendation feels like a service, not a data grab. The customer gets relevance; you get declared intent no algorithm could infer as cleanly.

Trust is part of the data strategy

It's tempting to treat privacy as a compliance problem for the legal team. It isn't. Trust is the interest rate on your data asset — the more customers trust you, the more they'll tell you, and the more your loop compounds. Every clumsy, creepy or over-reaching use of data withdraws from that account.

So be transparent about what you collect and why. Give customers control. Use data in ways that visibly benefit them, not just you. Handled well, privacy isn't a brake on personalisation — it's what makes deeper personalisation possible.

What to actually do

• Audit what you collect. Cut any field you don't act on — it's friction with no payback.

• Design one genuine value exchange to capture zero-party data in the next quarter.

• Close the loop: make sure the data you hold actually changes the next interaction.

• Stop depending on borrowed identifiers and invest in the profile you own.

Everything else in this series — personalisation, retention, measurement — assumes you have the data to do it. Build the engine first. The rest runs on it.

Is your data working or just sitting there?

The free Customer Engagement Accelerator assesses how well you collect, use and build on customer data — and where the loop is broken. Leave your email and we'll be in touch.

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