As a brand marketer, you know that obtaining a marketing opt-in is one of the vital parts of your strategy. They give you direct access to your target audience and help you build a relationship with personal communication and first-party data collection. 

But how much weight does an opt-in hold in your marketing strategy? When you identify the actual value of your opt-ins, you improve your campaigns and can make the most of your resources. And, from one marketer to another, we need all the help we can get.

This blog post will explore why opt-ins go beyond increasing sign-ups and how you can leverage them to supercharge your overall customer experience.

First-Party vs Third-Party

So before we go any further, what’s first-party data? And why is it better than third-party?

First-party data is the information you gather when a consumer interacts with you online. You can get location, device type, name, and more through sites and platforms you own and operate. Zero-party data is similar and is the information your consumer offers you freely and openly through events, form fills, and more.
Third-party data is consumer info that goes through an outside source to get to you, often missing pieces or helping the third-party market to your audience any way they want to get them back on their site. It’s more expensive and more damaging for a brand when you’re sharing your hard-earned data with a company that will often promote competitors for a chance to get consumers back on their platform instead of yours.

A breakdown of first vs. third-party data

Opt-Ins Build Trust

CAN-SPAM and GDPR are laws and expectations to protect consumers from the dreaded spam email. So when you ask for their consent to send emails through opt-ins, you’re showing your respect for the consumer and your level of trust with them. 

When a consumer opts in and provides you with their personal information, they’re open to hearing from you. The value of that explicit permission lies in its potential; you can now foster an ongoing relationship with your consumer and build even further trust in your brand. 

According to Sumo, the average email opt-in rate is 1.5%, which tells you how much faith consumers have in brands. (Spoiler alert: not a ton). So, when you look at your opt-in rates, that measurement is a great way to gauge your consumer trust levels. 

63% of consumers view brands as the biggest benefactors of data exchanges.

Opt-Ins Promote Engagement

Ads and content can only go so far; opt-ins open the door for two-way communication with your audience. When you understand what motivates a consumer to sign up for your messaging and why they opt in, you can tailor your messages in a way that resonates best. 

Personalized engagement builds a sense of brand community and encourages consumers to feel connected to the brand. When consumers feel like they’re seen and heard, they’re more likely to engage with you, from social media to brand activations in the wild. 

McKinsey did a 2021 report on the effectiveness of personalization done right and the negative impact on a brand when a marketing strategy misses the mark. 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions. And 76% get frustrated when this doesn’t happen.

Opt-Ins Drive Conversions

Opt-ins aren’t just a way to collect data; they can also immediately impact your bottom line. That’s right; opt-ins can drive a higher conversion rate.

You can create personalized campaigns that encourage sales by targeting messages to individual customers. Knowing each customer's interests, preferences, and behaviors helps you deliver the right message at the right time, leading to more sales.

That McKinsey report we talked about above had another takeaway:

1. Personalization drives performance and better customer outcomes. Companies that grow faster drive 40% more revenue from personalization than their slower-growing counterparts.

Opt-Ins Provide Valuable Data

Often when consumers opt-in, they also share additional data, such as their name, age, gender, and location. This incredibly valuable data is a powerful tool for getting to know your audience and discovering essential trends beyond personalization. 

These insights can help you understand the preferences and behaviors of your consumers, keying you into how to target your marketing spend and efforts more effectively. However, remember that this kind of trend analysis could take hours, if not days, without the right platform due to the manual nature of pulling reports from disparate platforms. 
So, to benefit the most from this opt-in, you’ll want to find a platform that allows you to both collect opt-ins (and other consumer data) and report on the data you’ve collected. For consumer events and experiences, such as field activations and brand home events, an experiential marketing platform like AnyRoad can save you hours in data analysis and reporting. 

AnyRoad gathers all types of consumer data and analyzes it in real-time to surface actionable trends

Opt-Ins Are Foundational

Opt-ins serve as the foundation for building long-term relationships between brands and consumers. The explicit permission a consumer gives you to reach out to them signals trust, leading to a sense of community with you and others who shop with you. 

Brand marketers must take advantage of the value of opt-ins and deliver on their consumer relationships by delivering personalized messages and offering the experiences that consumers crave. When done right, these opt-ins provide a platform for the brand to enhance the overall consumer journey with your brand. 

Want to learn how to get emails in the first place? Learn more about brand activations and QR code best practices with our resident expert, Shelby!