Turn Q4 Wins into 2025 Growth with First-Party Data

From Cyber Weekend to the Christmas and Boxing Day sales, Q4 contains the biggest eCommerce events of the year. During this peak period in online retailing, you can expect to receive higher-than-average website traffic and an increase in sales. 

But once January rolls around, these figures will often drop off due to shoppers being low on funds and the excitement of Christmas having worn off. During a time when it can be challenging to attract new visitors to your site, nurturing your Q4 shoppers can be an effective way to sustain the momentum of the previous quarter. 

Collecting first-party data from your Q4 site traffic, and leveraging this in the first quarter of 2025 to nurture these shoppers, can help to avoid an early-year slowdown in your sales. Utilising first-party data allows you to deliver more targeted marketing campaigns, improve your site’s customer experience, and drive growth throughout the new year.

The value of first-party data in Q4 and beyond

What is first-party data and why is it important?

First-party data includes any data collected by you directly and voluntarily from shoppers interacting with your brand online. This type of data is becoming more valuable to eCommerce brands due to growing consumer concerns about third-party cookies and how their data is used.

First-party data has specific advantages for both businesses and shoppers including:

• Ensuring explicit consent is given
• Providing more transparency about data usage
• Improving the accuracy of collected data
• Helping to ensure compliance with data privacy laws

Suggested reading: To learn more about first-party data and the benefits of collecting it, read our article ‘What Is First-Party Data and Why Is It Important in 2024?’.

Why collect first-party data during Q4?

It’s predicted that eCommerce sales in the 2024 Christmas period will grow by 9.5% from the previous year.¹ This means online retailers can expect extremely high amounts of website traffic to their eCommerce stores.

It’s essential you make the most of this extra traffic. One way you can do this is by maximising the first-party data you capture from your shoppers.

By optimising your online store for data capture throughout Q4, you can boost your email and SMS subscribers, better understand customer preferences, and track browsing history. You can then use these insights to develop and deliver future eCommerce strategies that foster long-term customer relationships over the upcoming months.

How to capture first-party data effectively

When it comes to capturing customer data, you should view it as a transaction in itself. Shoppers are more likely to provide you with their information, such as email addresses and phone numbers if you give them something in return.

For example, running a loyalty scheme where customers can access exclusive rewards in return for repeat purchases can enable you to gather useful data, such as birthdays and email addresses, on sign-up.

You could also use On-Site Messaging to offer shoppers incentives such as a percentage discount on their purchase in exchange for collecting their email address or mobile number.

Further reading: To discover more ways to capture first-party data on your eCommerce store, take a look at our article ‘6 Ways to Collect First-Party Data: Sources, Examples and Collection Methods’.

Strategies to leverage first-party data post-Q4

Once you have collected first-party data from your shoppers during Q4, you then need to plan out how you are going to use it. Without a clear strategy in place for how you will apply your collected data, you render it effectively useless to your business.

Here are three effective ways to utilise your first-party data from Q4 throughout the new year.

1. Personalised retargeting campaigns

During Q4, your shoppers’ browsing and buying behaviours will most likely have revolved around buying gifts for others, rather than purchasing products for themselves. Therefore, you need to be tactical when using this information post-Q4 to ensure you are delivering relevant messaging.

Leverage information about the type of gifts your shoppers are interested in buying to craft personalised gift recommendation campaigns for future holidays such as Valentine’s Day or Birthdays.

Categorise products by price range, giftee type, or the relevant holiday and use Salesfire’s Recommendations to display these on your website pages and in email campaigns. Try showcasing products that complement each other to encourage shoppers to bundle gifts together and increase average order value.

Doing this will ensure you are suggesting appropriate products to your shoppers at the perfect moment, to help inspire gift ideas and boost your conversions across gift-giving events throughout the new year.

2. Enhanced customer segmentation

After optimising your eCommerce site for first-party data capture during Q4, you will likely have gathered data about shoppers’ historical interactions with your brand, including products they have viewed or purchased.

You can leverage this data to create highly specific customer segments. Consider segmenting your customers based on:

• Average order value: Divide up customers based on whether they spend a large amount in one go, or prefer to check out with smaller baskets.
• Deal-seeking behaviours: Group together shoppers who have previously shopped with you during a sale or using a discount code as they may be interested in hearing about future offers.
• Item value: Categorise shoppers based on their tendency to choose lower or higher-priced items to better understand their budget.

These segments can then be used to personalise every future interaction customers have with your brand throughout their buying journey and to ensure they receive highly relevant brand news, product updates and offers.

By making shoppers feel like their needs are understood, you can build stronger long-term customer relationships which will drive increased conversions in the upcoming months.

3. Targeted email marketing

Segmented first-party data can also be useful for improving the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns. You can use your knowledge of customers’ browsing and buying habits to develop email marketing strategies that maximise click-throughs and conversions. 

With Salesfire’s Email Sequences, you can easily apply your customer segments to send out both automated and one-time email campaigns that are highly personalised to the individual shopper. This helps to ensure your email resonates with the shopper who receives it, improving its effectiveness at driving a conversion.

Here are a few ways you can use segmented first-party data from Q4 in your email campaigns:

• New Year and Winter Sales: When sending emails about early-year sales, segment customers based on their previous behaviour and showcase reduced items from specific product categories or brands you already know they are interested in.
• Email exclusive discount code: For customers who have previously purchased using a discount code, consider offering them an exclusive incentive to encourage them to return and shop on your site.
• New in: Inform customers about new-in products they may be interested in by adapting the email messaging to focus on lower or higher-ticket items, depending on the shopper’s historical preferences. 

Dividing up your email sends by segments based on Q4 first-party data allows you to deliver more personalised messaging to your shoppers. Optimising your email campaigns this way helps to ensure you get more out of the resources you invest in marketing your eCommerce business throughout the new year.

Long-term benefits of first-party data

Not only can collecting first-party data during Q4 help optimise the customer experience and drive conversions in the short term, but it can also help to future-proof your brand.

Consumers are more aware than ever of how valuable their data is and demand increased transparency about how brands collect and use this information. This means your business should adapt its policies to align with new consumer expectations.

The ethics of traditional data tracking methods, such as third-party cookies, are now being questioned, leading to a decline in their use. By collecting your own data, you can reduce your dependence on these methods and still provide the highly personalised and engaging experience shoppers now expect as standard.

Using first-party data can also benefit your brand long term by:

• Improving customer loyalty and retention: Having access to first-party data provides you with more opportunities to build and nurture relationships with your customers, making them want to keep shopping with you.
• Encouraging customer advocacy: First-party data enables you to give shoppers a more personalised experience, which can increase levels of customer satisfaction and make it more likely they will share their experience with others.

By preparing your online store to effectively capture first-party data during the peak eCommerce season, you can reap the benefits for your business into the new year and beyond.

Suggested reading: To find out more about the changes to Google’s third-party cookie policy, read our article ‘Google Abandons Third-Party Cookie Phase-Out: What It Means for eCommerce’.

Carry your Q4 success into Q1 2025

The uses of first-party data and its advantages for your business both short-term and long-term highlight why it’s so important to maximise the data you capture from shoppers during Q4.

Having effective data collection strategies in place throughout Q4, and leveraging this data with personalised retargeting campaigns, customer segmentation, and targeted email marketing, will help to keep conversions high as you move into the first quarter of the new year.

¹ Holiday season ecommerce spending hasn’t gotten much earlier, study shows | EMARKETER