Audience Builder: A Powerful New Way to Utilize Zero-Party Data Gathered from Stories!

Digital marketers are constantly walking a tightrope between the desire to provide personalized, relevant experiences for their users, and the need to respect the privacy of their data. While the internet is awash with information on user behaviors, not all data is equally reliable, valuable, or usable, and it’s important for brands to have access to high-quality user data to guide their product and content strategies and improve their user experience. 

As an engagement platform that lets brands embed full-screen, interactive Stories into apps and websites, we’re not only aware of the challenges of navigating user data, but also of the ways in which the Story format can help solve the problem. Which is why we’re thrilled to debut a powerful new feature for Storyly users to develop authentic relationships with their customer base: Audience Builder. 

Audiences and marketers love Storyly’s interactive stickers, which gather audience insights through polls, quizzes, and emoji slidersthat are quick, and fun for users to answer. With much higher engagement rates than traditional customer surveys, Stories with interactive stickers are an excellent source of high-quality user data, and now it’s possible to create audience segments based on user responses for precise and effective targeted messaging! 

‍Audience Builder allows you to create entirely new audience segments based on your users' responses to interactive Stories in minutes! By utilizing zero-party data to segment your audience, digital marketing teams can deliver personalized messages on a granular level that give their users exactly what they want. 

Why Focus on Zero-Party Data for Audience Segmentation?

Though the mobile ecosystem has been growing exponentially for years, the need for a rapid conversion to digital solutions spurred by the Covid-19 pandemic has led to an even bigger explosion in online discourse, commerce, and communication. Along with users generating more data with each interaction, audiences are becoming more sensitive to how that data is being tracked, secured, and utilized. Accordingly, both privacy legislation and industry standards are shifting away from the utilization of passively gathered data from third and first parties. 

In fact, Google Chrome is preparing to remove third-party cookies altogether by 2024, Apple is making it easier for users to block tracking across apps, and more and more websites, even social media sites, are focusing on giving users more control over their data, increasing their transparency about tracking tools, and being rewarded with an increase in brand trust. 

While at first it may seem like this spells bleak news for marketers who rely on this data to deliver relevant messaging to their users, this shift also represents an opportunity for smart brands to focus on zero-party data solutions. Users still demand personalized experiences, after all, but they want it from brands they trust to use their data well. The truth remains that there is no real shortcut to creating sustainable brand loyalty, but gathering and utilizing zero-party data can be a key part of the process. 

Users may be more cautious with their data, but they also have incredibly high expectations for personalized digital experiences and have grown to rely on data-informed curation. So what’s the solution? Don’t make your users share their data, let them do so instead! The power of zero-party data lies partially in the relationship that users have with their information. Are they seeing an ad for a product a friend mentioned three days ago that makes them feel like the internet has been eavesdropping? Or have they built a relationship with a trusted brand, shared their preferences through brand interactions, and been notified that a favorited product has been restocked or is available in a new color they just have to see? 

The difference in user experience is huge, and its effect on conversion and audience sentiment is immediate, which is why Storyly is excited to offer the Audience Builder feature to marketers looking to capture and utilize zero-party data for their communication strategy. 

How Does Storyly’s Audience Builder Work?

Here’s a sneak peek of how to gather, isolate, and utilize zero-party data with Storyly’s Audience Builder. 

1. Create a Story with Interactive Stickers: Using Storyly Studio, create a Story for your general audience or a predetermined segment with an interactive sticker that can ask for and collect user responses. You can use polls for simple yes/no or this/that questions, such as “Which dress would you wear to a concert?”; a quiz format for multiple choice options, such as “What kind of recipes would you like to see more of?”; a slider for general or emotional feedback such as “How helpful did you find this guide?”; or question stickers for nuanced qualitative feedback such as, “What made you choose to subscribe?”

2. Gather Responses: Give your audience some time to respond to your Story. If you’re curious to watch the answers roll in, navigate to your Storyly dashboard and click on the analytics section, then click on the interaction tab to see the data as it's collected. 

3. Build Your Audience: Once you’ve gathered enough data, go into the interaction tab to see the responses for your Story (Dashboard>Analytics>Interaction) and click on the new “Create an Audience” button. Once you click the button, a menu will come up giving you the opportunity to define your parameters and name your new audience. Click “Create Audience” to finalize and you will be taken to the audience page where you’ll be able to see your new audience processing, as well as others you may have created or imported from a CRM. Once the processing is done, your new audience is built, ready to export, download, or utilize directly in Storyly! (And if you’re using Moengage, Clevertap, or Braze you can even send the segment over directly thanks to our integrations)

That's it!

Use Cases for Storyly’s Audience Builder

Let’s take a look at some of the ways brands can use Stories and audience builder to deliver relevant content to engaged users!

Ecommerce: Interactive Story stickers are a great way to find out what your audience wants and help them find the perfect product. Try building audiences by:

• Asking about your user's style preferences or shopping priorities
• Learning their skin type or hair goals
• Finding about their reasons for ordering food delivery
• Gathering feedback about their most recent customer service experiences
• Offering product feedback opportunities

Content: Generalized data on user preferences can help guide a brand’s overall content strategy, but with individual zero-party data, you can take it to the next level by helping users find the content they’re most interested in. Try building audiences by:

• Finding out users’ favorite sports, teams, or athletes
• Asking about their dietary restrictions or nutritional priorities
• Allowing them to choose their favorite topics, creators, or content formats
• Discovering their educational goals and personal interests
• Gathering information on their pain points

Fintech: Financial technology apps that offer a combination of functionality and financial education can benefit greatly from finding out more about individual users and responding to their needs in order to build brand trust and loyalty. Try building audiences by:

• Asking about users’ knowledge base and what they’d like to learn
• Giving them an opportunity to share their financial goals with you 
• Learning about their pain points with budgeting
• Finding out what type of services they utilize most and why
• Offering them an opportunity to give feedback on their experience

Delivering Top-Tier User Experiences Powered by Actionable Insight

Hopefully, the above examples have given you some inspiration for ways in which audience segments created by interactive Story stickers can benefit your brand communication strategy. But make sure that before you create a Story to define a new audience segment, that you have a plan for delivering on audience expectations. For example, a mobile user who is new to a food recipe app can expect to see suggestions from a broad range of cuisines and a variety of foods. but once they have engaged with an interactive element that lets them express a preference for vegetarian meals, or a need for gluten-free recipes, their expectations of a personalized experience will have changed accordingly.

When utilizing interactive Story stickers and creating new audiences, be sure to close the loop on audience expectations by providing your users with relevant content curated to their expressed preferences and needs. After all, authentic communication is the core of any strong brand relationship, and asking for feedback, invites the need to respond to that feedback. Fortunately, Stories provide not only the ideal tool for gathering insights and defining these audience segments, but also for responding with top-quality personalized content that is engaging, full-screen, and mobile-native.

Designing a user-centric content and communication strategy empowered by zero-party data can help your brand enhance engagement, boost retention, and build loyalty like never before.

Ready to get started? Book a call today or learn more about how to use Audience Builder.