How To Scale Using Zero-Party Data?

Hi there,

Most brands are sitting on a goldmine they collected themselves and never opened.

It is called zero-party data. And it is the most underused asset in eCom right now.

Not because it is hard to collect. Not because the tools do not exist. But because brands collect it, store it in Klaviyo, and then send the exact same email to everyone anyway.

They’re either too lazy to actually implement it, or they lack knowledge.

This article is going to change how you think about personalisation, and show you exactly what to do with the data you are probably already sitting on.

What is zero-party data?

Zero-party data is information your customer willingly gives you.

Not data you inferred from their browsing behaviour. Not data purchased from a third party. Not cookie-based tracking that is disappearing anyway as privacy laws tighten.

Data your customer handed to you directly,because you asked.

• "What are you shopping for?"

• "What is your biggest problem right now?"

• “Are you buying this for yourself or as a gift?"

• "Have you tried products like this before?"

Every answer to every one of those questions is zero-party data.

And the reason it is more valuable than any other type of data you can collect is simple.

The customer told you exactly how they want to be talked to.

Most brands take that information and do nothing with it.

Why most brands are wasting it?

Walk into almost any Klaviyo account and you will see the same thing.

A quiz pop-up on the homepage. Four or five questions. Hundreds of profile properties filled with answers.

And then a welcome flow that sends the exact same five emails to every single subscriber, regardless of what they answered.

The data is sitting there. Nobody is using it.

It is the equivalent of hiring a market research firm, receiving a detailed report about your customers, and filing it away without reading it.

You paid for the traffic. You paid for the pop-up software. You paid for the tool that collected the data.

And then you ignored the most valuable output of all of it.

What kind of ZPD should you collect?

Not all zero-party data is created equal. The questions you ask need to be useful, meaning the answers need to actually change what you send.

Here are the types worth collecting:

• Shopping intent — "What are you shopping for today?" Routes subscribers into personalised welcome flows from the very first email. Someone shopping for skincare should not receive the same email as someone shopping for supplements.

• Goal or problem — "What is your biggest challenge right now?" or "What are you trying to achieve?" This tells you exactly which angle to lead with in your welcome flow and campaigns. Lead with the problem they told you they have.

• Who they are buying for — "Is this for you or someone else?" A customer buying as a gift needs completely different messaging, different urgency and different product recommendations than someone buying for personal use.

• Product or collection interest — "Which category are you most interested in?" If you have multiple collections, this ensures every campaign you send is relevant to what they actually came to buy.

• Skin type, body type or lifestyle — For beauty, health and fitness brands, this is one of the most powerful questions you can ask. It allows you to personalise product recommendations from day one without any purchase history.

The beauty here is that there are no rules.

You can ask whatever data you want to collect.

There’s actually 1 rule. Only ask questions where the answer changes what you send.

Where to collect it?

Most brands only collect zero-party data at the pop-up. That is one touchpoint. There are many more.

1. The Pop-Up

Before asking for their email, ask them a question first.

We use a quiz-style pop-up where step 1 is a single question. "What are you shopping for?" or "What is your biggest problem right now?" with clickable answer options.

They pick an answer. Then step 2 asks for their email.

By the time they enter their email, you already know exactly who they are and what they came for.

2. The Thank You Page

Right after checkout. The customer just converted. They are engaged and happy.

Ask one or more questions. "How did you hear about us?" or "What made you decide to buy today?"

The response rate on thank you page surveys is consistently higher than almost any other touchpoint.

3. The Post-Purchase Survey Email

Sent 7 to 10 days after delivery, enough time for them to have actually received and tried the product.

At this point you want to know exactly how the experience went.

Ask them:

→ What did you like about the product?
→ Was there anything you didn't like or would change?
→ Would you order again?
→ If not — why not?

That last question is the most valuable one you can ask.

Because the customers who say no are telling you exactly what is broken, in the product, the experience, or the expectation you set before they bought.

And the customers who say yes are telling you what to say in your next campaign to convert more people like them.

4. The 1-Click Survey Inside Emails

Instead of linking to an external form, embed the question directly in the email with clickable answer options. They click an answer. You capture the data. Done.

Response rate is three to four times higher than linking to an outside form.

This is done through Klaviyo plain text email hyperlinks.

5. The VIP Email

Your best customers are your best research source.

Ask them what made them keep coming back and what they wish you carried.

Free product research from people who already trust you completely.

6. The Cancellation or Refund Flow

When someone cancels or refunds, ask why immediately.

Give them four clickable options.

That data tells you what is broken in your product, messaging or experience, and lets you build a personalised recovery sequence around the specific reason they left.

How To Actually Use It?

This is the part that matters most. And it is where almost every brand falls down.

Collecting zero-party data without using it is worse than not collecting it at all.

Because it creates a false sense of personalisation without delivering any of the benefits.

Here is exactly how to use it:

Welcome flow personalisation

The most immediate use of ZPD is your welcome flow.

Once a subscriber answers your pop-up question, that answer should determine which version of the welcome flow they enter.

We typically split around two things: the problem they said they have, or the collection they said they are most interested in.

Someone who said "I struggle with sensitive skin" enters a welcome flow built around sensitive skin, different hero images, different product recommendations, different reviews, different copy angle.

Someone who said "I am shopping for haircare" enters a completely different sequence to someone who said "I am shopping for skincare."

Here’s how we did it for one of our clients.

Abandonment Flow Personalisation

ZPD does not stop at the welcome flow.

Your cart abandonment, browse abandonment and checkout abandonment flows can all be personalised using the data you have already collected.

Someone who told you they are price sensitive should not receive the same cart abandonment email as someone who told you they are shopping for premium products.

The objection is different. The copy needs to be different.

Campaign Segmentation

Tag subscribers based on their pop-up answers and use those tags when building your campaign segments.

Someone interested in skincare does not need your haircare campaign. Someone who said they are a beginner does not need your advanced tutorial content.

When you send a campaign, ask yourself whether the angle matches what that segment actually told you.

If it does not, either adjust the copy or exclude that segment entirely.

Product and service improvement

ZPD is not just a marketing tool. It is a product development tool.

The answers you collect in post-purchase surveys, what customers liked, what they did not like, what they would change, are direct feedback on your product and the experience around it.

Read them. Take notes. Feed them back into your product team.

Most brands treat survey data as email marketing insight. The best brands treat it as a business intelligence asset.

Share It With Your CRO and Ads Team

This is the step almost nobody takes, and it is one of the most valuable.

The language your customers use in surveys, the objections they raise before buying, the things they loved about the product, all of that is as useful to your CRO team and your paid ads team as it is to email.

If ten customers independently said "I was worried it would not work for my skin type", that concern belongs on your product page, in your ad creative, and in your targeting strategy.

Not just in your cart abandonment flow.

Send a monthly summary of your ZPD insights to everyone working on the brand.

It makes every channel better, not just email.

What Changes When You Do This Properly

When you collect zero-party data properly and actually build your program around it, everything improves.

Open rates go up because the subject lines speak directly to a problem the subscriber told you they have.

Click rates go up because the product recommendations match what they actually came to buy.

Conversion rates go up because the copy handles the objection they told you was stopping them.

Refund rates go down because customers who understood exactly what they were buying before they purchased are far less likely to be disappointed after.

LTV goes up because customers who feel like a brand actually knows them, rather than blasting them with the same email as everyone else, keep coming back.

None of this requires expensive software or a data science team.

It requires asking the right questions, building flows that respond to the answers, and treating every piece of data your customer willingly hands you as the valuable asset it is.

Before you go

If you read until the end, thank you. It genuinely means a lot.

Hit reply and let me know what you thought. Did this help? Was there something you wanted me to go deeper on? Is there a topic you want me to cover in the next issue?

I read every reply personally and every piece of feedback shapes what I write next.

If you are a brand doing over $200K per month and you want to scale your email and SMS revenue, book a call with my team.

We audit your account, identify the gaps, and build the system that turns your email list into your most profitable channel.

Book a call here

If you are not ready to work with us yet but want to implement some of what we teach yourself, check out our digital products on Gumroad.

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See you in the next one.

Andreas
Founder, AJ Media
ajmediaonline.com