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    Collect customer data to personalize your messaging

    Course overview
    Lesson
    6 min read

    Collect zero- and first-party data

    It’s time to start collecting data! Learn about the multiple different ways to collect zero- and first-party data using Klaviyo and other integrations.

    Make your customer profiles rich with data

    Your Klaviyo customer profiles already contain powerful data points, such as your subscribers’ geolocation, their consent status, and what they’ve been up to on your site lately. These properties and metrics tell Klaviyo which customers should move through a flow or be placed into a segment.

    While these data points are still crucial for day-to-day marketing purposes, any brand wanting to execute advanced personalization will need to enrich their customer profiles with data that is entirely specific to their goal, their business, and their customer base. By collecting custom properties and tracking custom events or metrics, you can make your customer profiles a one-stop shop for all of the key information you need to know about your customers to market to them effectively.

    Collect custom properties using a form

    Custom properties are a form of zero-party data. They are profile properties that you choose to collect yourself, and are hyper-specific to your brand’s strategy and use cases for personalization.

    The video below will walk you through how to collect zero-party data from your customers using a sign-up form.

    More ways to collect custom properties

    Sign-up forms aren’t the only way to collect custom properties! Explore the dropdown below to discover more ways to capture crucial zero-party data from your customers.

    Collect custom properties using email buttons

    When you want to collect custom properties from your existing subscribers, meet them where they are - in their email inbox!

    Set up buttons or links within your email templates to automatically add or update a custom property when a recipient clicks, and send a targeted campaign to your 60- or 90-day engaged segment. As the CTA here is a click, the recipient should ideally be redirected to another URL once they’ve done so - preferably a category or product page that aligns with the preference they’ve submitted. This method is perfect for finding out your customers’ preferences, shopping habits, gender, and other demographic data.

    Asking subscribers if they prefer pie or cake, and updating the profile property depending on which link they click.

    How to update a profile property when someone clicks a link

    Update custom properties using flows

    Did you know that sending messages isn’t the only use case for flows? Flows can also act as internal automations, creating, updating, or deleting custom properties on subscriber profiles when a certain trigger is met.

    Update profile property action in the Flows editor.

    You can use this functionality to tag a customer’s first-purchase date, which in turn can be used to trigger a first-purchase anniversary flow - an occasion many brands use to treat a customer and prompt them to order again.

    How to add an update profile property action to a flow

    Import custom properties using manual uploads

    If there’s zero-party data you’ve collected from a source that doesn’t have a direct integration with Klaviyo, you can always use the manual upload feature to import a list containing custom properties and match them with the appropriate profiles. Just make sure you have the appropriate consent to use this data before you start using it to tailor your messaging.

    .csv file containing 'Gender' profile property.

    Profile properties reference

    Understand subscriber preferences using a subscribe page or preference center

    You may be used to thinking of your preference center as the last line of defense before somebody decides to unsubscribe. However, it’s also a useful place to find out more about your customers, how often they like to hear from you, and what kind of topics they’re most interested in. Be careful what you promise here, though: only provide customers with frequency options if you’re prepared to honor them, and use content preference questions to collect the same type of demographic data you would with a sign-up form, i.e., what kind of sports do you play, what kind of pet do you have. This will allow you to personalize effectively without hurting your business by allowing customers to essentially opt out of crucial revenue-driving communications like abandoned cart flows and promotional email campaigns.

    Explore quiz and survey integrations

    If you want to go beyond sign-up forms and explore more creative ways of getting to know your customers, you can use quiz and survey integrations like Jebbit, Okendo, and Octane AI. These integrations allow you to create engaging quizzes or in-depth post-purchase surveys and then sync your customers’ responses directly to their profiles, so you can use the data to hyper-personalize your messaging.

    Import first-party data from across your tech stack

    Spoiler alert: your customer journey probably isn’t as linear as you think. Today’s consumer needs an average of 6 touchpoints with your brand before making their first purchase - and once you’ve turned them into a customer, those touchpoints will continue to increase. Many of these touchpoints happen outside of Klaviyo, on properties like your website, social media profiles, loyalty program, shipping journey, and more - and they can all be used to hyper-personalize your email, SMS, and push messaging. Explore the gallery below to see examples of data points from across your tech stack that you can import into Klaviyo as custom metrics, using our pre-built integrations or custom APIs.

    Loyalty

    Custom metric examples:

    • Customer moves up a tier
    • Customer moves down a tier
    • Customer reaches X number of points

    Custom metric use cases:

    • Trigger flow to inform customer of tier change
    • Trigger flow to warn customer of points expiry
    • Create segments based on tier membership

    Reviews

    Custom metric examples:

    • Customer leaves a 5-star review
    • Customer leaves a 1-star review
    • Customer rated X product 5 stars

    Custom metric use cases:

    • Trigger flow to alert marketing team of new 5-star review
    • Trigger flow to alert customer service team of 1-star review
    • Personalize messaging content based on known product affinity

    Shipping

    Custom metric examples:

    • Order fulfilled
    • Order delayed

    Custom metric use cases:

    • Trigger post-purchase flow
    • Trigger flow to alert customer service team of delays
    • Accurately time post-purchase messaging like review requests

    Subscription

    Custom metric examples:

    • Customer signed up to subscription
    • Customer paused subscription
    • Customer ended subscription

    Custom metric use cases:

    • Trigger ‘thank you for signing up!’ flow
    • Trigger ‘unpause’ reminder
    • Trigger subscription winback flow
    • Create segment of non-subscribers for upsell strategy
    Collect zero- and first-party data