Collecting zero-party data at sign-up

Anna Sophie Christensen, Head of Email Marketing & Retention at FABO, makes the case that zero-party data collected during sign-up is the starting point for lifecycle-aware email. When brands ask the right questions before the first send, they can map every subscriber into a clear stage: unconverted prospect, new buyer, lapsed customer, or loyal repeat purchaser. From there, communicating differently to each group removes friction rather than adding to the noise.

Why the sign-up moment is the right moment

Zero-party data is information a subscriber voluntarily provides: product preferences, purchase intent, category interest, or how often they want to hear from a brand. Sign-up is the earliest possible moment to collect it, and it has an advantage that behavioral data doesn’t - it’s immediate. A new subscriber who tells you they’re shopping for running shoes today doesn’t need five browse-abandonment emails before an algorithm figures that out.

Anna Sophie frames the goal in straightforward terms: make subscribers feel seen, answer the questions they haven’t asked yet, and signal that the brand will be there when they need it. That orientation - around the subscriber’s experience rather than the brand’s send schedule - is what distinguishes a useful welcome sequence from inbox filler.

According to McKinsey’s “Next in Personalization” research, 76% of consumers get frustrated when their experience with a brand isn’t personalized, and 71% expect companies to deliver tailored interactions (McKinsey & Company, 2021). The sign-up form is one of the few moments where a brand can simply ask and get a direct answer.

Mapping the subscriber base by lifecycle stage

The part of Anna Sophie’s approach that runs deepest in her practice is lifecycle segmentation. She describes a clear spectrum of subscriber states that already exist inside a platform like Klaviyo, waiting to be read and acted on:

• Not yet converted: Subscribers who have expressed interest but haven’t purchased. The communication goal here is to reduce uncertainty and lower the barrier to a first transaction.
• New customers: People who have made one purchase. They need reassurance, onboarding, and a reason to return.
• Lapsed purchasers: Customers who bought once but haven’t made a second purchase. Anna Sophie identifies this as the gap where loyalty is won or lost - and a significant opportunity most brands leave underdeveloped.
• Loyal customers: Repeat buyers who have demonstrated commitment. These subscribers can handle, and often appreciate, more sophisticated product-led content.

The data to draw these distinctions is already in Klaviyo. Anna Sophie notes that it doesn’t require a complex data engineering project - it requires knowing how to look at a customer base and then mapping communication to each group accordingly. Sometimes the right move is to not send at all: pulling a segment out of a campaign because the message is genuinely irrelevant to them is itself a form of optimization.

Salesforce’s “State of the Connected Customer” research finds that 73% of consumers expect companies to understand their unique needs and expectations (Salesforce, 2022). Lifecycle segmentation is the mechanism that makes that expectation achievable at scale.

Removing friction as the organizing principle

The concept Anna Sophie returns to in this chapter is friction. The goal of differentiated messaging is to make each email as easy as possible to open, understand, and act on. Personalization capability is the means; reduced reader friction is the end.

That framing reorients the metrics worth caring about. Deliverability, open rate, and click rate are outputs. The input is how much cognitive work the reader has to do. A lapsed customer who receives a broad “here’s everything new” email when they need a focused “come back, here’s one specific reason” email is experiencing friction. A not-yet-converted subscriber getting a loyalty program promotion is experiencing friction.

Epsilon’s research on consumer purchasing behavior found that 80% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase when brands offer personalized experiences (Epsilon, 2017). The mechanism behind that number is exactly what Anna Sophie describes: the right message, to the right lifecycle stage, at the right moment, feels easy rather than intrusive.

Zero-party data collected at sign-up feeds this process from day one. A subscriber who tells you they’re an existing customer looking for a specific category gets a different first message than a cold prospect. The data doesn’t have to be elaborate - even a single well-chosen question at sign-up can route a subscriber into a more relevant flow before any behavioral signal has had time to accumulate.

Cross-platform activation: Beyond the inbox

One point Anna Sophie raises that extends the value of structured zero-party data is its portability. The subscriber intelligence inside Klaviyo doesn’t have to stay there. She describes using Klaviyo audiences to populate paid channels - Meta, TikTok, Google - so that the same lifecycle logic governing email also governs what ads a subscriber sees.

That’s a meaningful multiplier. A lapsed customer receiving a re-engagement email who simultaneously sees a consistent message on paid social gets a coherent brand experience rather than a fragmented one. The Klaviyo data that enables lifecycle-aware email becomes the basis for coordinated cross-channel messaging.

For teams running Hello Retail alongside Klaviyo, behavioral signals from on-site search and product interactions can flow directly into Klaviyo segments, tightening the loop between what a subscriber does on-site and what they receive in their inbox or paid media feed.

What this looks like in practice

The practical implication of Anna Sophie’s framework is that sign-up form design is a strategic decision, not a UX afterthought. The fields included - or deliberately omitted - determine the quality of segmentation available on day one.

A few principles that follow from her approach:

• Ask with intent: Every question on a sign-up form should route to a specific communication path. If a data point can’t be connected to how it changes the email a subscriber receives, it probably shouldn’t be on the form.
• Pair with behavioral data: Zero-party data is strongest when it confirms or contextualizes what platform signals already suggest. A subscriber who indicates they prefer women’s footwear and then browses women’s boots is a clear signal, not an ambiguous one.
• Design specifically for the gap between first and second purchase: The lapsed-purchaser segment Anna Sophie identifies is often undertreated. A focused re-engagement sequence aimed at that group, informed by what the subscriber shared at sign-up, is one of the higher-return investments a retention-focused team can make.

The deeper point is that zero-party data collection rewards quality over volume. Gathering the right information at the moment a subscriber is most willing to share it (sign-up), and then using that signal to shape every subsequent interaction, turns a broadcast into a conversation that was already in progress.

Watch the full Conversations episode with Anna Sophie Christensen: Email marketing beyond the blast.