What is first-party data?

Data your company collects itself: sales, tickets, sign-ups, viewing, customers, email, your own social accounts.

First-party data is everything your company collects itself: sales, tickets, sign-ups, viewing, customer lists, email and CRM, loyalty programs, and the stats from your own social accounts. The agency and partner reports you already get count too.

It’s the most reliable data you have, because it records what people actually did: bought, signed up, watched. It’s also the least used, because it’s spread across tools and teams and nobody owns the job of lining it up. Once it’s in one place, it becomes the scoreboard every channel’s report and every listening finding is lined up against.

Why it matters

It’s the most reliable data you have, and usually the least used.

An example

Example (made-up numbers): a drinks brand has weekly sales from its distributor, 20,000 email subscribers and its own Instagram stats. Lined up by week, the team sees that a jump in email sign-ups and a rise in sales landed in the same week as a widely shared post. That’s a lead worth testing, and a test is what would show whether the post caused it.

Where it misleads

Assuming you need perfect data to start. Most brands already have enough to see which spend paid off, and the gaps are worth knowing about too.

How Arcus handles it

Arcus connects every piece of it, from sales to email to your social stats, into one place you own, inside your own setup. Every answer we give starts there. Where it’s too thin to call something, the answer says so.

More in our guide: What is first-party data, and what do I do with mine?