For years, zero-party data (the data customers willingly share) was a talking point. Marketers knew it mattered, gave it a slide in the deck, and then moved on to more urgent fires. When third-party cookie deprecation stalled, it was easy to deprioritize. The crisis had been averted, or at least delayed, and ZPD fell off the roadmap.
That was a mistake. The case for zero-party data has never been stronger, and it has almost nothing to do with cookies anymore. It’s about AI, the growing complexity of the buyer journey, and brands building durable consent-based relationships versus those still relying on signals they don’t own and can’t fully trust.
What is zero-party data and why does the definition matter?
Zero-party data refers to information a customer intentionally and proactively shares with a brand – preferences, purchase intentions, communication cadence, how they want to be recognized. These are signals the customer has volunteered in exchange for something valuable. Inferred data works by observing customers without telling them. ZPD works by asking them, and making it worth their while to answer honestly.
Kobie’s own consumer research has found that the act of asking alone can generate an emotional connection, particularly among engaged loyalty members. ZPD also aligns naturally with privacy frameworks like GDPR and CPRA, reducing legal exposure and improving personalization accuracy in ways inferred data simply can’t match.
Consumers are more willing to share than you might expect
Nearly nine in ten loyalty program members are willing to share personal information in exchange for rewards, and more than half of U.S. consumers say they feel comfortable sharing within loyalty programs. But there’s a caveat: Kobie’s 2025 consumer research found that 86% say the need for their data must be extremely obvious before they’ll share it. Ambiguity kills willingness. Clarity drives it.
Loyalty programs have a structural advantage here: the value exchange is already built in. Members have self-selected into a relationship where sharing drives relevance – at onboarding, at tier milestones, at anniversary moments, and through preference centers that let members stay in control.
Why AI makes ZPD urgent now
AI agents are mediating the relationship between brands and customers – surfacing recommendations, personalizing content, orchestrating journeys. And they are only as good as the data they’re fed. ZPD gives AI what it actually needs: clean, explicit, explainable signals that perform with greater precision and are far more defensible to customers and regulators alike. Being able to say “we personalized this because you told us you prefer eco-friendly products” is a very different conversation than relying on a black-box model built on third-party signals.
Kobie’s Zero-Party Data Hub is built specifically to capture and activate this data at scale, powering Panoramic Customer Profiles™ that fuel real-time, AI-driven personalization across the member lifecycle. This is the connective tissue between what your customers tell you and how your technology acts on it.
What loyalty leaders should be doing right now
Most organizations have collected some ZPD. Few have a coherent strategy behind it. Here’s where to focus:
Define your ZPD schema. Identify the six to twelve customer attributes that genuinely change your decisioning – category affinity, communication cadence, sustainability preferences, recognition preferences. If you can’t name them, you don’t have a strategy yet.
Design value-exchange moments. High-quality ZPD comes from high-value asks. Pair data collection moments at onboarding, tier changes, and anniversaries with immediate, tangible returns – better recommendations, bonus points, exclusive access.
Wire it into your AI infrastructure. ZPD that lives in a preference center but doesn’t inform offer logic, creative selection, or personalization isn’t working. It has to be a first-class input to your CRM, CDP, and decisioning engine.
Build for explainability. Document the ZPD inputs behind your AI decisions. This is both a governance imperative and a trust-builder. Members who can see why they received a particular experience are far more likely to engage with it and share.
The window to act is now
The brands that will lead the next three years are building privacy-first, loyalty-anchored ZPD pipelines and wiring them directly into AI-driven decisioning. The ones that wait will find themselves competing on signals they don’t own, and watching customers share their most valuable data somewhere else.
Your loyalty program is already the most powerful place to earn this data. The question is whether you’re using it that way.
Contact us today to learn about our ZPD strategy service.
