By now you’ve probably worked out whether your data is genuinely first-party or just sitting on a platform you don’t fully control. The next question is the one that actually keeps people up at night: what do you do about it?
Most businesses can meaningfully improve their first-party data position with a handful of changes to what they’re already running. Here’s where to actually begin.
Start With What You’re Already Collecting
Before adding anything new, take stock of what’s already coming in through channels you own:
- Website behaviour – pages viewed, time on site, scroll depth, form starts vs. completions
- Purchase and enquiry history – what people bought or asked about, and when
- Email engagement – opens, clicks, unsubscribes
- Account and login data – if customers create accounts, that’s a goldmine sitting mostly untouched
Most of this data already exists somewhere in your stack Shopify, your CRM, your email platform, it’s just not connected to anything useful. That’s usually the real problem, not a lack of data.
Fix the Plumbing
The biggest wins come from connecting things that already exist rather than adding new tools:
1. Get your tracking server-side. Client-side tracking (the standard Google Tag Manager setup most sites still run) is increasingly unreliable: ad blockers, iOS privacy changes, and browser restrictions all chip away at what you can actually see. A server-side GTM container routes data through a server you control, which means more of it survives the trip and you own the pipe it travels through.
2. Centralise it in one place. Even getting your website events, CRM records, and ad platform data into a single dashboard makes a difference.
3. Make consent part of the collection, not an afterthought. Every piece of first-party data you collect should come with a clear answer to “why did they give us this?” Consent banners that are just legal cover, rather than genuinely explaining the value exchange, tend to produce lower opt-in rates, which means less data, not more compliance.
Feed It Back Into Your Ads
Once you’re collecting first-party data properly, the next step is making sure it actually reaches the platforms that need it: Google Ads, Meta, wherever you spend. This is usually done through server-side tagging and conversion APIs, which pass first-party events directly from your server to the ad platform instead of relying on a browser pixel that may or may not fire.
This is the step most businesses skip, and it’s the one that actually moves the needle on ad performance. Collecting the data is only half the job, it has to get back to where decisions are made.
Where to Start This Week
If you’re not sure where to begin, pick one:
- Go server-side. This is the highest-leverage move on the list. Client-side GTM setups are leaking more data every quarter as browsers and ad blockers tighten up – server-side tracking is what actually keeps your first-party data first-party, instead of losing it in transit before it ever reaches your ad platforms.
- Audit what’s already flowing into your CRM and email platform. Most businesses already own more first-party data than they realise; it’s just scattered and disconnected.
- Add one small value exchange (a preference centre, a gated guide) to start growing your first-party list from scratch.
Server-side tracking is the one that pays off fastest, because everything else you collect only becomes useful once you can reliably get it back out to your ads. If you start somewhere, its best to start here.
