 surveys, behavior and purchase history, customer service calls, emails, click-throughs from email marketing campaigns, and content downloads—all this is first-party data.The biggest value of first-party data (besides the price tag: free), is that it provides you with absolute and accurate information about the people who are currently converting, and it gives you the opportunity to mine additional information from it. Using data analytics, models can be built to help you identify the characteristics of your most loyal customers, allowing you the opportunity to target prospects with these same indicators.You can also use analytics to compare groups, such as buyers vs. nonbuyers, to understand what makes your purchasers unique. With this type of detailed insight, you can identify the best prospects and create extremely accurate and relevant customer journeys that are tailored to those most likely to convert.
First-party data has high relevancy and transparency, but it can have limited reach and scalability.
through direct relationships with outside sources or directly from other businesses. This type of data is essentially another company’s first-party data that is shared with you.How might we receive and use second-party data? Consider co-oping with businesses or using the services of second party data aggregators. Many noncompetitive, complementary businesses working in similar spaces and sharing similar audiences make for great second-party data partnerships. For example, if you are in the landscape business and team up with a company that provides pool maintenance services, the information shared between your organizations could be highly valuable for both parties involved.
An appliance retailer could contract with a second-party data collector to access the website-browsing audience of an appliance manufacturer, placing retargeting display ads to an already-interested audience. By pulling second-party data via Google AdWords, you can provide key terms based on user actions throughout Google Search. This type of information is unique to your company; however, it comes to you via an outside source—Google. You can use several mechanisms to collect and use second party data, each requiring different levels of investment of time and resources.
Word to the wise: don’t throw caution to the wind! Second-party data options and opportunities can be a legal minefield, requiring deep levels of knowledge to navigate privacy compliance. Look to the experts for help.
Second-party data can have mid- to high-range relevancy, scalability, and transparency, depending of course on the accuracy of the data within the partner organization.
Although much more commonly discussed than second-party data, many marketers miss out on fully leveraging third-party data. Third-party data comes from compilers such as Acxiom, Epsilon, and Experian and originates from a variety of places, including surveys, panels, opt-in online tracking, cookie-based tracking, registrations, public records, and offline transactions.
This data is extremely useful for a variety of marketing tasks and can significantly improve the ability to make thoughtful evaluations. By allowing the marketer to apply audience-based demographic look-alikes and access dozens of consumer- and business demographic overlays, today’s marketers can use data analytics to create database segments and entirely new target audiences.
While many reputable companies are gathering and offering third-party data, buyer beware: you can and should ask questions before making a purchase. To find the best third-party data partners, consider the following questions: How do they collect data? Is the data cookie-based only, or do they have access to offline activity? Is the data extrapolated? How many times does a user take action in order to fall into a segment, and how recently does the action have to be taken for them to be documented and collected? How fresh is the data?
Third-party data scores high in reach and scalability but lower in relevancy and transparency.
Most marketing executives strongly agree that data-driven marketing is crucial to success, and with these handy tips, you, too, can start using first-, second-, and third-party data to your advantage.
While the availability of more data than ever before is changing the marketing landscape, we leave you with this one thought: remember the customer. Every step you take toward implementing a data-driven approach should create a more simplified and customized buyer’s journey. With this in mind, use data to create a more relevant and personalized experience, and your campaigns will be exponentially more successful!
By the way, have you been wondering how popular data-driven marketing is? According to the 2017 DMA Statistical Fact Book, 966,000 jobs have been created by the US data-driven marketing economy!​To find the best earphones under Rs.500 for you, we started our research by visiting reputed technology websites and dedicated audio websites. We dug a little further into the maze of earphone available by having our researcher join “The Indian Audiophile Forum”.The Indian Audiophile Forum is home to the biggest audiophiles in India currently, who take their audio very seriously.
To add to our research work done over the past year we visited Mr Jacob Abraham, CEO of Rontek. Rontek has been in the audio and power-electronics manufacturing for nearly two decades.
The Knowledge Zenith EDR2 set of earphones use the same in-ear style design that's popular today along with an amazingly balanced sound for an extremely low price. Unlike the VE Monk’s, the EDR2 does reproduce sub-bass and higher frequencies more faithfully without them being recessed. Also despite the design suggesting otherwise, it is fully closed back and thus doesn't leak any sound nor allows any sound inside allowing for better bass response.
Mic version is almost Rs.200 more!
​Costing less than a medium-sized pizza the VE Monk Plus has no business sounding as good as it does. These earbud style earphones are a nod to the older generations of earphones. While the mid biased sound is great for vocals, a sound signature which is not found in this budget. So overall the great sound and cheap price make the Monk Plus a definitive pick.
While our other two best picks are for people who love a balanced sound, the BoAt BassHeads 100 delivers bass in spades making it the perfect tool for EDM lovers. Add to that the low price, mic support, unique and comfortable design and you have amongst the best budget earphones under 500.
Who is our best pick for?
Earphones are not your usual type of electronic gadget. It's not a mixer or a roti maker. It's more specialized and it needs a lot of understanding of audio to really judge. So because of the technicalities involved we started by looking at suggestions by top tech websites and audio websites. Our next step was to pick suggestions by some of India's biggest audiophiles on The Indian Audiophile Group. To this, we added earphones that are popular on Flipkart and Amazon.
​With the shortlisted earphones, we dug around trying to find their specifications like impedance, sensitivity and frequency response. We even gathered frequency response curves from review websites like rtings, phonograph, and head-fi.
​Now with so much data in hand we needed a little help to really look through the earphones and pick the best. So we sought the help of our audio expert at Rontek. Rontek’s CEO helped understand the specifications and find the best pick of the lot.
Every time you read an article featuring an audio product there will be many words through at you like frequency curve, sound signature, warm sound, V-shaped. If you feel really confused with what they even mean, then don’t worry we are here to help with our “Understanding Audio” section.
Unlike most products like home appliances and other gadgets, audio products are more difficult to judge because each person has a different taste when it comes to music and sound. Some prefer the sound that is true to the composer's vision, while some prefer addition to that sound in terms of more bass or more treble. The way that an audio product’s sound reproduction is tuned is called as the sound signature. The following are the common types of sound signatures.
Flat sound (No boost in any frequency) found most commonly in studio monitoring headphones from Audio-Technica and Beyerdynamic.
V-shaped sound (Low end and high end are boosted) is common on V-Moda headphones making them great for EDM, Hip-Hop type of sounds.
When you look at the spec sheet of any headphone, earphone or speaker you will see the three main specifications Frequency Response, impedance and sensitivity.
Above we spoke about sound signatures, now sound signature and frequency responses are almost the same thing. Frequency response is the graphical representation of the ability of the audio device to produce different frequencies. A frequency response graph has the loudness in Y-axis and frequency on X-axis.
While the sound signature is determined based on the nature of the frequency curve, it can be bright or flat or bass boosted. Most audio products work within the 20-20000Hz frequency range, which is also the range of human hearing.
Hi-Res audio products are certified to produce frequency responses up to 45000Hz and more (We even reviewed a Sony MDR-1A that has a frequency range from as low as 3Hz all the way up to to a breathtaking 100000Hz). Now many may argue how are Hi-Res audio products even worth it when we can't even hear those high frequencies.
While you can't hear you can definitely feel the instruments and sound. Also, most of the Digital audio players, headphones, earphones and speakers now have Hi-Res certifications so whether we like it or not Hi-Res is becoming a norm. Do note a Hi-Res certification is not an assurance of great sound, a normal frequency range headphone