Unlocking Zero-Party Data: Scale Personalisation with Review Attributes
Ecommerce brands face a catch-22 right now – how to deliver the tailor-made experience consumers want when those same consumers demand greater privacy online. As a source of zero-party data, review attributes are a viable solution. And thanks to a major update to our Review Attributes feature, you now have much greater control over the zero-party data you collect.
Head to your REVIEWS.io dash and you’ll find a brand new, dedicated interface for review attributes. Here you can create a custom set of additional questions to ask as part of the review collection process and gather that all important zero-party data.
But before we get ahead of ourselves, what exactly do we mean by zero-party data, and why is it such a valuable resource?
What is Zero-Party Data?
As we enter an age of transparent and responsible data collection, there are two sources eCommerce brands can turn to to better understand their audience – first-party and zero-party data.
First-party data is information you gather from user interactions like purchase history, on-site behaviour and email click throughs. It’s a passive approach to data collection that can help you create more relevant customer touchpoints – provided you use that data strategically.
Zero-party data on the other hand comes straight from the horse’s mouth. It’s information that you proactively look to obtain from a customer, and that the customer is happy to hand over with full consent, typically because there’s some value in it for them. Like answering questions on their physical attributes and lifestyle preferences in return for a personalised experience.
And when you have a tool as powerful as our updated Review Attributes feature, you can drive that personalisation at scale.
What is Review Attributes?
The Attributes interface lets you structure custom invitations to gain actionable insight from product and company reviews. It’s where you’ll create and control the additional questions you want to include in review requests.
These questions can relate to the customer, the product or your company:
Customer attributes: use these to get to know your audience. Think beyond simple demographics. Ask questions that help you understand how they connect to your brand – for example, their favourite sport for athleisure, or their skin tone for beauty brands.
Product attributes: use these for insight on how your products stack up. How well do they fit according to size? What’s the customer’s take on quality? Do they perform to the expected standard?
Company attributes: use these to evaluate service. Would the customer buy from you again? Would they recommend you? How satisfied were they with delivery times and packaging? When it comes to packaging we recommend brands use Custom Mailer Boxes to create a memorable experience.
What you ask is entirely up to you, and you have several question types to choose from:
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- Choice: customers can select a single attribute from multiple options
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- Centered selection: great for measuring deviation from standard
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- Multiple choice: customers can select multiple attributes from multiple options
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- Text: add/edit additional free text questions
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- Yes/No: customers must select a single option
With your questions created, you can then change the order in which they appear in requests, toggle between active/inactive status, and choose where you want review attributes to be published.
We’ve made some changes here too, upgrading our product review widget to support all question types. You can also display all question types for product and company attributes on your REVIEWS.io profile.
How to Leverage Review Attributes for Business Growth
So how do you put our updated Review Attributes feature to best use? If it’s not clear already where we think the biggest advantage lies, it’s in that zero-party data and the potential it brings for highly profitable personalisation.
When you combine the granular detail you can gather through review attributes with the segmentation capability of a platform like Klaviyo, you can create highly targeted campaigns.
As a use case example, imagine you’re a sports brand with a line of running shoes. A customer buys a pair, and as part of a product review request you ask them three things: what their preferred running terrain is, their average weekly mileage, and how they’d rank their foot from narrow to wide.
What you have there is the information you need to send highly relevant running shoe recommendations, around the exact time their existing pair is reaching the end of its lifespan (and thanks to our recent Klaviyo integration update you can now include shoppable UGC galleries to support those recommendations).
It’s a really powerful approach – and an effective solution for the personalisation dilemma – but it’s not the only benefit to be had from review attributes.
Improve the Shopping Experience
When customers browse products online, they’re denied the ability to pick them up, try them on or test them out. This lack of tangibility can make them indecisive, which is when they look to review content.
What attributes do is give that review content context. The customer can see if they share common attributes with the reviewer, and whether or not the product experience in question is relevant to them.
Our widgets let customers filter reviews by attributes, so they can make informed purchase decisions based on relatable content.
How to Collect Actionable Product Insight
By asking product specific questions in review requests, you get the information you need to better serve your customers.
For example, if you’ve launched a new flavour protein bar, you can look to your customer base for their opinion on how it tastes, and feed that right back to the development team.
Our new attributes interface makes it easy to rearrange, activate and deactivate questions, so you can easily tailor review requests to gain actionable insight as and when your products change.
How to Build a Better Service Model
Company attributes will give you an edge when it comes to customer service. Your existing model might be fine, but even the smallest improvement could see you win more custom than your competitors.
If delivery is always on time, work with your courier to make it faster than expected. If the checkout process was OK, look to make it totally frictionless. Consumers today are more demanding than ever, and the best way to meet their demands is to ask them how you’re doing.
Support UGC with Attributes
Our developers have been busy lately, and as well as our Review Attributes update, they’ve also built a brand new UGC Gallery and Publishing feature. As a brief overview, this allows you to collate UGC from multiple sources (video reviews, photo reviews, Instagram), and combine it into shoppable UGC galleries. You can then publish these across your store, and integrate them into marketing emails.
The UGC feature supports review attributes, so when a customer clicks on a piece of visual review content, they can see the product or customer attributes associated with it.
With UGC selling an authentic product experience, attributes confirming the relevance of that experience, and an add to cart button ready and waiting, it’s a combination that has amazing potential for boosting conversion rates, and driving business growth.
Start Collecting Zero-Party Data Today
To use the Review Attributes feature, you’ll need to be on our Growing Business plan or above. You can also find more information on its new capabilities in our attributes support article.
If you’re after some guidance on how to make this feature work for your brand drop our support team a line, or contact your customer success manager to implement a custom made strategy. And to really leverage that zero-party data, be sure to check out how REVIEWS.io x Klaviyo integration works harder for the customer.
Written by Reviews.io (Author: Richard Ball)
Link to Original Blog: https://blog.reviews.io/post/collect-zero-party-data-and-drive-personalisation-at-scale-with-review-attributes