Zero-Party Data
Zero-party data is information that a customer intentionally and proactively shares with a business — such as preferences, purchase intentions, and personal context — through direct interactions like conversations, surveys, and forms. Unlike third-party data collected without explicit awareness, zero-party data is consent-driven, making it the most valuable and privacy-compliant data a business can collect.
What Is Zero-Party Data?
Zero-party data is a term coined by Forrester Research to describe data that customers voluntarily provide to a business in exchange for a better experience. This includes stated preferences, purchase intentions, communication preferences, and personal context shared directly during interactions. In the age of privacy regulations and the deprecation of third-party cookies, zero-party data has become the gold standard for personalization — and AI-powered conversations are one of the most effective ways to collect it naturally through platforms like Plura's AI SMS and voice agents.
How Zero-Party Data Differs From Other Data Types
Understanding the data hierarchy is critical for building a compliant, effective personalization strategy. Zero-party data sits at the top of the trust and accuracy pyramid.
- Zero-party data: Shared directly and intentionally by the customer (e.g., "I'm looking for a 3-bedroom home under $500K").
- First-party data: Collected through customer behavior on your owned channels (e.g., pages visited, links clicked), inferred rather than stated.
- Second-party data: Another company's first-party data shared through a partnership — less direct and less transparent to the customer.
- Third-party data: Aggregated from external sources without direct customer relationship — increasingly restricted by privacy regulations and browser changes.
Why Zero-Party Data Matters for Business Owners
As privacy regulations tighten and third-party tracking deteriorates, businesses that rely on inferred or purchased data face growing accuracy and compliance risks. Zero-party data flips the equation: customers tell you exactly what they want, when they want it, and how they prefer to be reached. This is the most accurate and trustworthy data available.
Are you still relying on third-party data sources that are becoming less reliable and more restricted every year? What if every AI conversation with a lead or customer automatically captured their stated preferences and intentions? How much more effective would your campaigns be if personalization was based on what customers told you, not what you guessed?
How Plura Fits This Category
Plura's AI agents are designed to collect zero-party data naturally during conversations — qualifying leads, capturing preferences, and documenting customer intentions in real time. This data is stored in Plura's stateful database and made available across every future interaction through the unified inbox.
- Conversational data capture: AI agents collect stated preferences, intentions, and personal context during natural voice and SMS conversations — no forms required.
- Stateful memory storage: Every piece of zero-party data is stored persistently and accessible across channels and sessions for future personalization.
- Compliance-first architecture: Data collection happens within Plura's SOC 2, HIPAA, and GDPR-compliant infrastructure, ensuring consent is documented and data is protected.
- Actionable intelligence: Zero-party data feeds directly into workflow logic, enabling AI agents to personalize outreach, route conversations, and trigger actions based on customer-stated preferences.
Key Capabilities for Zero-Party Data Collection
When building a zero-party data strategy, look for these capabilities in your communication platform:
- Natural conversation design: The ability to embed data collection into organic conversation flow, not forced surveys or rigid forms.
- Structured data extraction: Automatically parsing and storing customer responses as structured, actionable data fields.
- Cross-channel persistence: Ensuring data collected via voice is available in SMS follow-ups and vice versa.
- Privacy and consent management: Built-in mechanisms for documenting consent and respecting data preferences at every touchpoint.
FAQs related to
Zero-Party Data
What is the difference between zero-party data and first-party data?
Zero-party data is information customers share with you intentionally and proactively such as stating their budget, preferences, or purchase timeline during a conversation. First-party data is information you collect through observing customer behavior on your owned channels such as pages viewed, emails opened, or purchase history. Both are valuable, but zero-party data is more accurate because it reflects what customers explicitly tell you rather than what you infer from their behavior.
Is zero-party data only collected through surveys and forms?
No. While surveys and forms are common collection methods, AI-powered conversations are one of the most effective and natural ways to gather zero-party data. When a customer tells an AI agent their preferences, needs, or intentions during a phone call or text exchange, that is zero-party data captured organically. Plura's AI agents are designed to collect this information as a natural part of the conversation flow, without the friction of formal surveys.
How does zero-party data improve marketing and sales performance?
Zero-party data enables hyper-personalized outreach based on what customers explicitly want, rather than statistical guesses. Sales teams can tailor their pitch to stated needs, marketing campaigns can segment audiences by declared preferences, and follow-up sequences can be timed based on customer-stated timelines. Businesses using zero-party data typically see higher conversion rates, lower acquisition costs, and stronger customer loyalty because the experience feels genuinely personalized.
Is zero-party data collection compliant with privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA?
Yes. In fact, zero-party data is considered the most privacy-compliant data type because it is shared voluntarily by the customer with clear awareness. However, businesses must still document consent, store data securely, and honor data deletion requests. Plura's platform ensures zero-party data collection happens within GDPR, HIPAA, and SOC 2-compliant infrastructure with full audit trails.
What is the best way to start building a zero-party data strategy?
Start by identifying the most valuable customer data points for your business such as purchase intent, budget, preferences, or decision timeline. Then design AI conversation workflows that naturally surface these data points during lead qualification, support interactions, or follow-up sequences. Use a stateful platform like Plura to store and activate this data across all future interactions, ensuring every conversation builds on the last.