How GenAI transforms the B2B customer experience with first-party data

Shifting to first-party data

Technology has changed how customers make purchases, whether it’s business-to-customer (B2C) or business-to-business (B2B). They want to do business with companies that understand their wants and needs on a deeper and more engaged level. This is driving a change in sales and marketing strategy. Instead of relying on third-party data as their primary source of actionable customer insights, businesses are shifting to first-party data to precisely target marketing efforts based on real interactions and engagement.

The result is companies gain detailed knowledge about customer behaviors and preferences that third-party data just can’t provide. First-party data is collected directly from the source. This leads to greater confidence in its accuracy and reliability, and ideally, both improved conversion rates and greater revenue.

First-party data is obtained through technology stacks that can support customer data platforms (CDPs), which aggregate and organize data from multiple sources and create a unified customer profile. CDPs help businesses stay compliant with data privacy laws by tracking consent and managing data accordingly. In addition, they can help businesses optimize marketing spend by accurately targeting high-value customers or those most likely to engage or convert based on the unified customer data.

The EY organization recognized this trend and set out on a journey to create a blueprint and platform that would give businesses the ability to fully leverage the value of first-party data. Working with Adobe, team members developed the Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform. Aimed at B2B companies, it’s a tool that allows businesses to get to the single source of truth about their customers that can more effectively inform decision-making. 

As the largest implementation of the Adobe Experience platforms, EY integrated existing data sources, aligned disparate sources to  identify the foundation for personalization across the global ecosystem, and adopted journey analytics to help manage end-to-end client journeys.

Building qualified buying groups

The shift to using first-party data takes advantage of the ability technology provides to connect with people on a more personal level. Combine that with the idea of the qualified buying group (QBG), and businesses have a means to engage potential customers more directly. The QBG recognizes that it’s not just the CEO who evaluates purchasing decisions. It’s the CTO, the CMO, the CFO and other leaders outside the C-suite. While the B2B space is about one business doing business with another, it’s ultimately about people trying to make connections and meet needs.

A sales team that can use technology to identify the members of a QBG and create a holistic view of that group different from the holistic view of the company will be able to act and market differently. They will have a better understanding of who they need to reach and what they need to provide in order to initiate a relationship that ultimately leads to a transaction.

GenAI is a critical piece in this effort. One of its strengths is taking and automating repeatable processes. A company can purchase a database of contacts and then using GenAI, develop a series of rules that leads to a condensed list of individuals who are thought to be buyer and decision-makers in that organization. A process that would take days and even weeks for humans to complete could be done in minutes.