Blog

What are Clean Rooms? How do they work? And why are they much better for your business?

These are a few of the questions we answer in today’s Data Unlocked episode.

With Clean Rooms, you can make your marketing strategy better and more efficient.

How?

Well, that’s a question better left for our guest to answer.

In this week’s episode of Data Unlocked, Jason sits down with Aaron Fetters, CEO and Managing Partner at Transparent Partners.

Aaron has spent over two decades delivering value for the world’s largest brands, from Procter and Gamble to Kellogg to comScore.

Today, he is using his expertise to help Transparent Partners reach their goals.

Transparent Partners is a boutique consulting company whose mission is to empower industry leaders to drive profitable business growth through better connected customer data, technology automation, and enhanced collaboration.

In this episode, Aaron and Jason discuss Clean Rooms, how they work compared to Google Analytics, how new data privacy laws are affecting the industry, and more.

Ready to learn?

Let’s dive in.

In partnership with

Daasity ELT+ and Simon Data are both built on the Snowflake Data cloud, and together, the trio power data stacks built for consumer brands.

Marketers must approach data with a growth mindset.

While the data may be dynamic and growing, there are ways to capture insights and to leverage data into customer experiences that drive higher returns with less effort.

Fundamental to reaching that goal, however, is finding the right tools to build a data stack that’s powerful enough to centralize and cut down time to value, while still being accessible enough for marketers to test, iterate, and run campaigns quickly and easily.

With Daasity and Simon Data, marketers can finally build and test campaigns from end-to-end, starting with their owned data.

Daasity’s ELT+ enables organizations to centralize data from all tools and platforms, gathering insights across the entire org.

ELT+, with its extensive list of pre-built connectors, enables brands to centralize and normalize data from all areas of the business. Daasity brings this data within reach to form a single source of truth, facilitate analytics and automated reporting, and then push data downstream to Simon Data’s Customer Data Platform (CDP).

Simon Data then enables marketers to activate their data and deliver meaningful campaigns downstream that are built off a full 360 degree customer data profile. This cross-channel engagement means customers are receiving the most relevant messaging at the right time and on the right channel in their customer journey.

But the value of the partnership is enhanced by its foundation on Snowflake and the power it brings to the hands of IT and marketers alike. Snowflake’s best-in-class cloud data warehousing functionality facilitates cost savings on IT and data technology for merchants, and its extraordinary data security protects both merchants and customers.

Marketers understand that great messaging comes from great data, and this growth minded data stack means that teams don’t have to choose between a reliable data pipeline, robust analytics, or seamless CDP functionality.

Additionally, Snowflake turns your data warehouse into a marketing powerhouse, enabling marketing teams instant access to the data they need to create automated and personalized journeys and campaigns without draining IT resources.

The growth-minded data stack includes a commitment to centralizing around the cloud data warehouse as a single source of truth. This is critical, and absolutely necessary for growth-minded companies to lean into if they’re going to decrease time to value and lower acquisition costs. And with platforms powered by the Snowflake data cloud, both Daasity and Simon Data tap directly into data that marketers wouldn’t otherwise be able to access, turning data users into data experts.

In short, this next-gen partnership is the fastest and easiest way to put a true Customer 360 in your marketing team’s hands, and growth-minded companies have a winning solution that will set them apart from competition.

Like it or not, ChatGPT is the talk of the town – well, the world – right now. Everyone is saying that it’s going to change the game for brands all over the globe.

Ever since its launch, it’s been showing millions of people around the world how the future could look. And, truth be told, it’s exciting!

AI and machine learning could change everything for organizations everywhere. To discuss this, we’ve invited someone who’s been studying machine learning and keeping up with the trends on this week’s podcast.

In this episode of Data Unlocked, Jason sits down with Olly Downs, the SVP of Data, Analytics, and Machine Learning at BARK.

Prior to this, Olly held positions in big name companies, such as Zulily, Zillow Group, AdReady, and Microsoft Research.

Today, he leads BARK’s Data, Analytics and Machine Learning initiatives in order to enable quality data-driven decisions for the company.

BARK launched in 2012 with BarkBox, a monthly themed subscription of all-natural treats and toys for dogs. Today, they reach over 1.8 million dogs every month. And their goal is to “make dogs as happy as they make people.”

In this episode, Olly and Jason discuss machine learning and how it’s helping BARK learn more about their customers, the algorithmic work within the realms of data science, how to apply AI for marketing purposes, and more.

Ready to learn?

Let’s dive in.

Roses are red, violets are blue, it’s almost Valentine’s Day again, how prepared are you?

Here we go. You’re trying to figure out how to reach people during a time when audiences are a total toss-up. Some people love Valentine’s Day; some have high expectations of their partners; some prefer Galentine’s Day; and for some, it’s a sensitive time.

As a marketer, this may be one of the most complicated holidays to master. It’s not a predictable celebration like the Super Bowl, where people eat wings and drink beer and hang with their friends. There’s no “right” way to celebrate: pajamas and wine are great, a date night also works, and for some, doing nothing is the best way to go. So how do you know which direction to take?

You use data, of course! First and zero-party data can be crucial here in driving personalized campaigns. By relying on data that has been collected from consumers and their actions on your platforms, you’re getting a sneak peek into their preferences—more on how to best organize your data after we show you a few examples.

We <3 these activations – here’s why:

We’ve already started to see a few client campaigns that we have heart eyes for. We hope this gives you some inspiration and pointers on ways to market to your audiences.

1. Don’t use exclusionary language.

We adore this example from jetBlue. The subject line doesn’t mention Valentine’s Day, which means it isn’t alienating those who might not want to celebrate. In the actual email, the language is cheeky, but more importantly, it fits the theme while staying vague enough. You can travel with your family who you love, but a romantic getaway with a plus one is just as great.

They also sent this out before February started, ensuring they were ahead of the game.

2. Don’t forget your favorite Valentine!

It’s you! It’s easy to get swept away in the madness of buying gifts for everyone else you love – nieces, puppy, parents, siblings, significant other, etc. and planning out special celebrations. This text made me stop in my tracks. It reminds buyers that being selfish this month is okay! Add something to your cart for you too.

3. Create an exclusive coupon code for subscribers

Amazing creativity by Boisson here– they honed in on their red and rosé wines and are offering subscribers 10% off on those specific products for the entire month of February. This extended window to use the coupon is a great reminder that libations are always a good idea.

4. Or, even better, double their cart… for free!

Who doesn’t want to spoil their fluffy Valentines? As mentioned, I will be. BarkBox has an offer running that allows new subscribers to get two times the toys when they subscribe. The pups in the campaign are super adorable, and the offer is irresistible.

Their Instagram story links directly to the promotion making it simple for those interested to have a seamless experience.

5. Remind followers to drop a hint

People can be forgetful. We all have a lot going on – especially as marketers. Lunya is making it easier than ever for their followers to let partners know what they want this Valentine’s Day. Another helpful tidbit they shared on their Instagram stories is shipping “due” dates. It’s yet another reminder to procrastinators of when the latest possible order they can place to avoid sleeping on the couch.

6. Promote on-theme products

Baublebar is incredible at getting creative for holidays. Hearts are easy to include in jewelry, but even for Christmas, St. Patrick’s Day, and the Fourth of July, they create and feature holiday-specific products that consumers won’t want to be seen without. It helps that their products are also affordable (and cute!).

Never Settle

Whether it’s Valentine’s Day or any other day, personalized and powerful customer experiences are now expected by consumers.

Once you master the creativity piece of marketing campaigns – which these brands all clearly have – you’ll find even more success in personalization. As mentioned, first and zero-party data collection is crucial to executing targeted campaigns.

However, not only do messages to consumers need to be relevant and timely, but they should also be delivered in a respectful cadence. To know what this optimal outreach frequency looks like, marketing teams need a complete view of their customers across all touchpoints. This is no easy task, as marketing data is historically incredibly siloed.

Cloud Data Warehouses help centralize data in one spot, allowing for every customer touchpoint to sit in a centralized, secure, easy-to-use, and flexible platform. Pair this with a Customer Data Platform, and you’ve found the perfect match. Simon Activate allows marketers to execute data-driven testing, targeting, and measurement, making campaigns like the above feel incredibly tailored to both potential and current buyers.

Looking to launch marketing campaigns that your customers love? Reach out soon before the next wave of holidays (cough, Mother’s Day, and Father’s Day), so you too can have eye-catching personalized campaigns.

‍

Today, we’re announcing the launch of Simon Activate, a solution that gives marketing teams the ability to quickly and easily build advanced custom audiences by unifying customer data from their Cloud Data Warehouse (CDW) along with additional sources. While traditional CDPs require a high degree of data and integration resourcing to see value, Simon Activate’s unique approach enables companies to create an actionable 360-degree customer view in days or weeks. The result is a solution that marketing teams can rely on for data-driven optimization of customer acquisition costs, lifetime value, and more to help drive faster revenue growth.

Companies are storing increasingly large amounts of data in their data warehouses and data lakes, but today’s marketing tools have legacy architecture that cannot integrate with or leverage data in a CDW. Simon Activate is purpose-built for the Cloud Data Warehouse and uses zero-ETL technology to offer an accessible and transparent data architecture. Unlike other solutions, Simon Activate is not limited to warehouse data for audience-building, and the identity resolution capabilities of Simon’s CDP allows users to combine data from their other sources into single, complete customer profiles. Its intuitive, marketer-friendly UI makes it simple to create hyper-targeted customer segments from a large volume of data to power and improve the performance of campaigns across their top channels.

“It was a deliberate decision to build Simon Activate on Snowflake and the greatest benefit we’ve seen is that it has allowed us to better integrate with CDWs in a way other CDPs/Martech tools that were built on legacy architecture cannot,” said Jason Davis, CEO, and founder of Simon Data. “Additionally, it has allowed us to build new products, such as Simon Activate, at speed as new customer needs and pain points arise.”

“Simon Data’s mission aligns with where we see the modern marketing data stack heading,” said Denise Persson, Chief Marketing Officer at Snowflake. “In 2023, marketers will face even more pressure to achieve higher ROI and deliver better customer experiences. It is critical to build a solid data foundation for your marketing engine. Simon Activate, Powered by Snowflake, provides simple, powerful capabilities that demonstrate what building your marketing stack on the Snowflake Data Cloud can unlock for joint customers.”

Industry-leading applications are Powered by Snowflake. By building on Snowflake, product and engineering teams can develop, scale, and operate their applications without operational burden, delivering differentiated products to their customers. With the Powered by Snowflake program, builders like us get access to resources to help them design, market, and operate their applications in the Data Cloud. To learn more about the Powered by Snowflake program and how organizations are building on Snowflake, click here.

How ASOS Activates Data

Simon Activate allows leading online fashion destination, ASOS, to create and send advanced segments to its marketing cloud that it otherwise could not have. Simon integrates with multiple third-party vendors to combine previously-siloed data, provide a single view of each customer and incrementally increase revenue.

“Simon Activate’s entire toolchain is seamless, purpose-built, and equips our marketing team with a complete and accurate customer 360,” said Ashley Fisher, Head of Technology, ASOS. “Simon Data’s Snowflake architecture has transformed our ability to deploy targeted marketing campaigns by allowing our marketers to launch campaigns in a matter of minutes. Now our overall program is more segmented, more personalized, and ultimately, much higher performing than that of our existing legacy architecture.”

What Happened?

According to a company regulatory filing a few weeks ago, Southwest Airlines reported an estimated $825 million, or 4% of their current market cap, in losses stemming from their mass service disruption over the holidays. U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said the airline “failed its customers.”

How did this happen?

When frigid temperatures swept across the Northeast in December, it wasn’t surprising to see many major airlines experiencing delays and cancellations. But if you happened to open Twitter between the 22nd and 31st, or opened any other breaking news publication during that span, you probably noticed Southwest Airlines catching A LOT of heat from frustrated customers.

More than 15,000 Southwest flights were canceled starting on Dec. 22, including more than 2,300 canceled the week after Christmas –  almost a week after the storm had passed. This was due to an archaic scheduling software problem, which has been an open secret at Southwest for quite some time. Longtime Southwest pilot, Larry Lonero, said, “The frontline employees have been watching this meltdown coming like a slow motion trainwreck for sometime…and we’ve been begging our leadership to make much-needed changes in order to avoid it.”

What can marketers learn from this?

By failing to take the necessary steps to transform a critical piece of company infrastructure, something like this was inevitable. It reminded me of when the super in my midtown loft apartment used cheap plywood to patch up our floor anytime there was a plumbing problem – What ensued was…well…I’ll leave it to the reader’s imagination.

So, what can marketers learn from this? In our world, we often talk about the importance of digital transformation in enabling brands to use data more intelligently to create the best possible experiences for their customers. So, while Southwest’s issue was related to an archaic scheduling technology, much of the same logic can be applied to outdated marketing systems (think legacy marketing clouds, on-prem databases, and “home-built” email systems).  

Many businesses have accepted the reality that to succeed in today’s economy, they need to build a modern technology infrastructure that can support modern business practices. There’s a reason why Snowflake has a $45 billion market cap. Marketers need tooling that’ll allow them to be responsive to their customer needs and demands.

Ultimately, brands that fail to treat data as a first-class citizen in their business end up a) losing market share from their progressive-minded competitors, b) spending way too much time cutting data in excel for basic marketing asks and c) delivering cringe-worthy experiences to customers, that’s simply unacceptable this day in age, like below:

The Bottom Line:

Your customers deserve better. Especially during this seemingly never-ending period of economic uncertainty and unpredictable shopping behaviors. Finding ways to monetize existing customer bases and growing LTV will be paramount.

Brands can no longer afford to let outdated technology impede their ability to execute at a high level. They need to adapt.

‍

Every customer has a long-term economic value to your business. Customer churn, also known as customer attrition, erodes profits and can even lead to reputation damage when unhappy customers tell others their reasons for leaving.

That’s why it’s so important for marketers to be aware of customer churn and take steps to measure and minimize it. In this article we’ll take a look at what customer churn is, how to effectively measure it, how to reduce it, and what tools are best for managing churn long-term.

What is customer churn?

Customer churn is the percentage of customers who stop doing business with a company within a given time period. This is an important metric to monitor because it indicates the health and sustainability of the business.

Low customer churn is a good indicator of customer satisfaction and loyalty. Likewise, a high churn rate shows customers are dissatisfied and lack loyalty to your brand—factors that will greatly impact the growth and sustainability of your business.

Marketers can use churn rates to measure the success of their buyer’s journey, customer lifecycle marketing efforts, and even omnichannel campaigns.

Types of customer churn

Customer churn can be broken down into a few primary types:

Contractual churn: Contractual churn is the most common form of customer churn. It occurs when customers cancel their subscriptions or contracts. This type of churn is most relevant to businesses with recurring services or subscription-based models.

Involuntary churn: Involuntary churn occurs when customers are unable to keep using a product or service due to technical or other issues. This type of churn is most relevant to businesses providing digital services or products.

Voluntary churn: Voluntary churn occurs when customers opt to switch to another product or service. This type of churn is most relevant to businesses that offer products or services in competitive markets.

Attrition churn: Attrition churn occurs when customers no longer use a service or product due to inactivity or lack of engagement. This type of churn is most relevant to businesses with recurring services or subscription-based models.

Involuntary churn is the hardest to control because the customer’s reasons for leaving are often not deliberate. Perhaps the customer lost their job, moved, or simply no longer needs the product you offer due to personal or lifestyle changes.

It’s best to focus your efforts on the types of churn that can be prevented.

How is customer churn measured?

Churn calculation is an easy way to benchmark how well your customer retention efforts are working.

Customer churn is measured by calculating the percentage of customers who have stopped doing business with your company over a given period of time. This calculation is based on the total number of customers at the beginning of the period and the number of customers who left during the same period.

For example, if your company had 500 customers at the beginning of the year and 100 of them left during the year, the customer churn rate would be 20%.

Use this equation each year (or even each quarter) to see how your marketing efforts are paying off. Naturally, the lower your customer churn percentage, the better you’re doing overall in retaining your existing customers.

But it isn’t enough to simply measure customer churn—it’s also critical to know how to predict it, so you can prevent it.

How can you predict customer churn?

According to Statista, the average churn rate across some of the biggest industries in the US hovers around the 25% mark. Analyzing historical data markers is one of the best ways to predict customer churn. By understanding past customer behavior, it’s easier to uncover patterns that suggest a customer may be likely to churn in the future.

Here are some indicators to keep an eye on:

• Customer engagement
• Purchase frequency
• Click-through rates (CTRs) from promotional emails or campaigns
• Customer account changes

By evaluating customers’ interactions with your business, you can begin to understand how they feel about your brand—and how likely they are to stick around. Armed with this information, you can set measures in place to lower your churn rate.

Strategies for reducing customer churn

The antidote to customer churn is customer loyalty. If you aren’t nurturing the customer journey, you risk lowering your retention rate and increasing churn.

Here are six things you can do to build stronger customer relationships:

1. Provide excellent customer service

Providing excellent customer service is one of the best ways to prevent customer churn. Being responsive to customers’ needs and addressing their concerns goes a long way toward making customers feel valued, hence nurturing brand loyalty.

For example, a customer might be having an issue with your product or service. If your customer service team is quick to respond with solutions and takes the necessary steps to solve the customer’s problem quickly and efficiently, then that customer will more likely stick with you rather than switching to a competitor. If you have too high a volume of customer interactions to keep up with personally, you may want to employ tools like chatbots to help you respond in real time.

2. Track customer feedback

Being proactive about tracking customer feedback is a great way to show your customers you’re listening, even when they aren’t reaching out to you directly. As a brand, it’s up to you to keep your finger on the pulse and stay updated on customer sentiment, what they’re saying, and how well they’re enjoying your product.

Here are some key channels to monitor for customer feedback:

• Customer reviews
• Social media posts and comments
• Historical customer service interactions
• Survey responses

3. Offer incentives and upgrades

Offering rewards does a lot to nurture customer loyalty. A loyalty program where customers can earn points for every purchase and redeem them for rewards like free shipping or exclusive products provides long-term dividends.

Customers who engage with a rewards program are more likely to stay with you in the present and return to you for their future needs.

4. Tailor your product or service to customer preferences

Let’s say you own an online coffee store. You’ve noticed that a large portion of your customers prefer vanilla coffee beans. By tailoring your product pages to include more vanilla coffee bean varieties, you can cater to the preferences of your customer base.

This will make customers more likely to frequent your web store, because they know they’ll find what they want. It will also increase customer loyalty and satisfaction as customers feel that their needs and desires are being met.

5. Stay in regular contact with customers

Staying in regular contact with customers is a great way to prevent high churn rates. By maintaining communication through channels like email or social media, you can create a greater sense of connection between customers and your brand.

For example, if you have a subscription-based product or service, you can use SMS or email marketing to stay in regular contact with subscribers and update them on new features, products, or promotions you’re offering.

Keeping customers up to date and showing them you care about their experiences will make them more likely to remain loyal to your brand. Regular communication builds a sense of trust and encourages customers to remain engaged with your product or service.

6. Create personalized experiences

Creating personalized customer experiences is a great way to reduce churn. When customers feel that you understand their particular needs and preferences, they’re more likely to keep doing business with you.

Let’s say you have a retail store and have started sending customers personalized emails with products they may be interested in based on past purchases. This will make them feel like you understand their preferences and value their business, which will encourage them to keep shopping with you.

By combining all the above strategies, marketers can create positive customer experiences that increase customer loyalty and reduce churn. But in order to implement them, you’ll need a good way to manage your customer data.

Collecting and analyzing customer data

A data-driven approach will give you deeper insights into customer behavior and preferences, helping you identify customer needs so you can create tailored marketing campaigns or products to meet them.

But how do you collect customer data from all your touchpoints across different platforms? And how do you unify all that data so it forms a complete picture you can actually act on?

Activating your data with a CDP

A customer data platform (CDP) gathers and unifies customer data, helping marketers gain deeper insights into customer behavior and tailor marketing tactics accordingly.

With data at the forefront, you’re able to create personalized marketing campaigns to strengthen customer-brand relationships and re-engage customers who are likely to churn.

One way to do this is with customer segmentation. Perhaps some customers respond better to discounts or free shipping, and others do better with a loyalty or rewards program. You can use this data to break them up into segments and create personalized marketing campaigns that speak directly to each group.

A customer data platform empowers you to wield your customer data as you see fitting. Here are a few of the many ways you can make a CDP work for you:

• Analyzing customer data to understand buying habits and preferences
• Tailoring marketing campaigns to specific customer needs and interests
• Tracking and analyzing customer feedback or satisfaction issues

A robust CDP fueled with customer data is an invaluable tool for increasing customer retention and lowering churn.

The consequences of customer churn: How can it affect your business?

Customer churn can have a significant impact on business growth. The following are just a few of the ways customer churn can affect your businesses:

Loss of revenue

Unhappy customers—or those who have found a better alternative—are less likely to remain loyal to your company or product. That’s a no-brainer, right? The problem is, accruing enough unhappy customers can get expensive in the long run.

It is far more cost-effective to maintain the customer relationships you’ve already established than to build new ones. Customer acquisition is costly and will quickly eat into your monthly recurring revenue (MRR).

Diminished brand reputation

Customers who choose to leave your brand may share their negative opinions or experiences with others. In an age of social media, it only takes a few seconds for a disgruntled customer to share their dismay with the whole world. Sometimes it can even go viral.

Consider that a tarnished brand reputation is incredibly costly—and downright difficult—to repair. It may take even more work and resources than building the brand itself.

Decreased market share

Without the necessary customer insights and data, it is difficult to identify trends and create strategies that enable your business to grow its market share. And in a competitive marketplace, if you’re not gaining ground, you’re losing it.

Ensuring customer loyalty and lowering churn rate is a must for companies that want to optimize for long-term growth.

Lowering churn rates with Simon Data

Customer churn is an important metric because it indicates the sustainability of your business. It’s essential to measure, predict, and reduce customer churn in order to maintain a strong customer base and promote growth.

By providing excellent customer service, offering incentives and rewards, and tailoring products and services to the needs of customers, marketers can effectively reduce churn and improve business performance.

Simon Data’s audience management and cross-channel orchestration solutions provide the tools you need to gather, unify, analyze, and action your customer data, so you can reach your customers with the right messaging at the right time.

Request a demo today to see how Simon CDP can help your business lower its churn rate—and keep it low.

‍

The new year always brings in new resolutions, and this is no different in the data world. 2023 is finally here, and it’s bringing with it a number of changes in the data marketing industry.

What are these changes, you ask? And how will they affect brands and their relationship with consumers?

Well, these are a few of the questions we ask this week’s guest on the podcast, and he has delivered!

In this week’s episode of Data Unlocked, Jason sits down with Scott Breitenother, the founder and CEO of Brooklyn Data Co,.

Before founding his company, Scott was the VP of Data & Analytics at direct-to-consumer mattress startup Casper.

Scott is an investor and advisor. He specializes in building data driven organizations, and he’s used his expertise to found Brooklyn Data Co..

Brooklyn Data Co. is a consultancy offering full-stack data and analytics team as a service. Their work is all about providing their clients with the technical skills, experience, and leadership to deliver best-in-class data capabilities.  

In this episode, Scott and Jason discuss Scott’s experience at Casper. They also talk about changes in the data marketing industry he saw in the last year, the importance of good customer segmentation, and more.

Ready to learn?

Let’s dive in.

It’s always fun to review the past year and marvel at how much time was spent listening to our favorite music, all the places we visited, or how much incredible work we accomplished. For Simon Data, looking back on the successes of 2022 has us excited for what 2023 will bring for our Simon Mail email-sending platform.

While Simon Mail is almost two years old as a sending platform, 2022 was Simon Mail’s first full calendar year in existence. Though technically still a youngster, the Simon Mail platform has already seen fantastic growth, consistent results, and the addition of powerful tooling that enables marketers to get the most out of an email-sending platform fully integrated with their CDP and first-party data.

What we’ve been building

When it comes to email success, there is no substitute for accurate insights and powerful orchestration capabilities. Two of the most important features added to Simon Mail in the last year have given senders deep, actionable insights into how their email messaging performs. First, we released our Deliverability Insights tool that allows marketers to quickly identify and triage potential delivery or inboxing problems across the wide array of mailbox providers and across important breakdowns like top campaigns, recipient domains, and even IP pools. These comparisons, combined with simple-to-use data filters, simplify the otherwise complicated processes required to optimize email sending for good deliverability.

Learn more about our Deliverability Insights Tool

We also saw the addition of Simon Mail’s Content Heat Maps feature this year. While insights into deliverability results help marketers know how to get more mail to the inbox, knowing how content is performing and where in that content recipients spend the most time interacting is crucial for the work of optimizing content for recipient engagement. Simon Mail makes it simple to clearly see what parts of your content resonate most with recipients and which sections do not.

Learn more about Heat Maps

In addition to meaningful insight into email deliverability and content performance, marketers need tools that make easy work of activating their data for powerful orchestration. Simon Mail’s most recent feature addition gives marketers a tool in our Deliverability Dataset feature. Inside Simon Data’s powerful segmentation tool, Simon Mail senders have access to an array of pre-configured deliverability-specific data points that can be used in conjunction with any number of first-party data points to make sure the recipients being targeted for email are engaged recipients and not risk to deliverability. Data points like unique open rate, last delivered or last opened dates, total delivered or opened messages, and even how many open events were related to Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection work to make Simon Mail’s segmentation and orchestration capabilities a powerful engine for great deliverability.

Learn more about Deliverability Dataset

2022 and Deliverability

All email-sending platforms claim to have great deliverability, but what does that even mean? When we at Simon Data talk about deliverability, we mean the ability for senders to not only have their messages accepted by mailbox providers but get those messages placed in recipients’ inboxes. Over the past year, Simon Mail has proven successful at just that. This success is largely because of the tooling we give senders to empower more accurate targeting and message orchestration. But the proof isn’t in the tooling…it’s in the pudding?

In terms of deliverability proof pudding, here are the numbers for 2022 thus far:

• Simon Mail has delivered over 1.3 billion messages with a delivery rate of over 99%.
• All Simon Mail senders combined for a unique open rate (opened messages/delivered messages) of 50%.
• As a platform, Simon Mail’s Unique Open Rate, which is adjusted for pre-fetched open events like those generated by Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection, was over 9.4%.
• Finally, the unique click rate (messages clicked/messages delivered) for all of Simon Mail thus far in 2022 is over 1.4%.

While there is no single metric that defines good deliverability, these numbers show that senders using Simon Mail in 2022 were able to get their messages successfully in front of the right recipients to drive engagement and marketing success.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Good overall deliverability results for a year are great, but great results across the busiest email-sending days of the year truly demonstrate a platform’s ability to deliver messages to recipients’ inboxes. Simon Mail’s Black Friday/Cyber Monday sending period did just this.

Between November 22 and November 29, Simon Mail:

• Delivered over 65 million messages with a 99% delivery rate.
• Generated a unique open rate of over 45.7%.
• Generated an adjusted unique open rate of over 6.6%.
• Saw a unique click rate of 1%.

Simon Mail users could focus on the important work of messaging subscribers and customers rather than worrying about delivery or inboxing challenges often seen during this time of year.

Deliverability Services

With powerful tooling for deliverability comes opportunities for Simon Mail senders to employ deliverability strategies that once seemed too complex or cumbersome to implement. Simon Data not only gives senders the tools they need to simplify the work of deliverability but also provides the opportunity to engage our Expert Deliverability Services to ensure they are using those tools to their maximum potential.

Through tactics like contact engagement scoring, mailbox-provider-specific sunsetting strategies, and the integration of first-party conversion data into deliverability reporting, Simon Mail senders engaging with our Deliverability Services saw stellar results during the Black Friday/Cyber Monday sending period. When compared to the entirety of Simon Mail’s sending over that time period, senders utilizing Simon’s Deliverability Services saw roughly:

• 7% higher unique open rates
• 2.5% higher adjusted unique open rates
• 1.5% higher click rates

If you are already a Simon Mail sender and want more information on how our expert services can help you maximize the amount of email you deliver to recipients’ inboxes, contact your account manager.

Looking Forward

Over the course of 2023, we will continue adding to the tooling that enables senders to make sense of email deliverability and invest more time into maximizing marketing efforts. To learn more about Simon Data and Simon Mail, request a demo today and make 2023 a breakthrough year for your email marketing.

‍

Many of the leading  brands you’re likely familiar with use a CDP (also known as Customer Data Platform) to grow their businesses.

CDPs can help you understand your customers on a deeper level. This, in turn, helps you create a better marketing strategy.

However, not all CDPs are created equal, and finding the right one for you can be a complicated task.

This is exactly what we discuss today!

In this week’s episode of Data Unlocked, Jason sits down with Darren Rankine, Partner of Marketing Technology at Transparent Partners.

Darren started his career in marketing technology over two decades ago. He has worked with big brand names, including McDonalds, Accenture, and Plexure.

For the last four years, he’s been using his expertise to help Transparent Partners grow.

Transparent Partners is a media and marketing technology consultancy dedicated to helping clients navigate the complex digital landscape.

Their work is all about helping brands become familiar with the latest media and marketing technologies and implement these technologies for better returns.

In this episode, Darren and Jason discuss the main complexities in martech and how to choose the right CDP for your business. They also talk about the marketing challenges CDPs can solve, and more.

Ready to learn?

Let’s dive in.

Gathering customer data improves business’ marketing efforts. It enables you to create targeted campaigns and unlock otherwise hidden customer insights that lead to sales. However, many businesses need a better way to process that data. A customer data platform (CDP) is designed for marketing. It gathers customer data from several different sources to build a unified view of your customer so your team can precisely execute marketing strategies.On the other hand, a customer relationship management platform (CRM) is designed for sales. It gathers prospect information through the direct contact customers have with your brand. Here’s a deeper dive into the specifics of both a CRM and a CDP, how they differ, how they work together, and for whom each type of platform is best.

What are the benefits of a B2C CRM?

Marketing is tough, and competition is fierce. A sales team would have a hard time keeping up with the complexities of modern marketing without a good customer relationship management platform in place. Let’s look at the most significant benefits of using a CRM:

More consistent customer interactions

Have you ever received a newsletter that you only vaguely recalled signing up for eight months earlier? Chances are, you hit the unsubscribe button and moved on to your next task. A CRM helps you stay at the front of your prospects’ minds by constantly staying in touch with them—whether by email, direct mail, or targeted campaigns. With CRM automation, salespeople stay on top of each account, communicating with leads at optimal times and anticipating objections.

Improved customer loyalty

No customer likes feeling like a number, and a CRM ensures that you treat every customer as an individual. A good CRM will help marketing teams track details about their interactions with each customer, so they can build better relationships.With a CRM, marketing teams can track customer interactions, preferences, and histories, and use that information to deliver a more personalized experience. By understanding each customer’s unique identifiers, you step up your customer experience.

Improved decision-making

A customer relationship management system offers reporting and analytics features for improved, data-driven decision-making. Good CRMs often include near-real-time data capture, guiding your customer journey with a better-informed sales process.

What are the benefits of a CDP?

Using a customer data platform for your marketing campaigns determines whether you reach your key performance indicators (KPIs) or fall short. A CDP offers several benefits:

Removal of data silos

Data becomes harder to use when it’s siloed inside different sources and applications. For improved messaging and more proactive marketing campaigns, a CDP works to unify this data—whether it’s zero-, first-, second-, third-party, online, and offline data.

Deeper customer insights

A customer data platform enables marketers to build comprehensive customer profiles that offer insight into real pain points, interests, wants, needs, and even firmographic data (the equivalent of demographic data for B2Bs). With unified customer profiles, marketing teams can execute new marketing strategies and create hyper-segmented and personalized campaigns.

Savings through automation

In a data-driven world, automation is your best friend. It takes repetitive yet critical tasks off your to-do list, saving you time and resources so you can focus on higher-ROI initiatives. Automation also allows marketers to establish evergreen strategies that bring in a consistent, predictable stream of new leads and more data, all while building brand awareness.

Increased personalization

Today, marketing is all about personalization. About 75% of consumers are more likely to purchase from a business that offers them a personalized experience. According to McKinsey, even B2B customers prefer an ongoing omnichannel experience that’s personalized to them. Personalized experiences are so powerful that customers are willing to switch to providers that offer them. Yet you can’t launch fully personalized marketing campaigns without a platform that gathers, cleans, centralizes, and organizes your data to make it usable. With a CDP, marketers draw data-driven insights about customers' wants and needs.

Better prediction

The ability to predict the wants, needs, and, in some cases, actions of their customers takes any brand’s marketing efforts to the next level. Brands gain a competitive advantage by using predictive analysis to find new marketing opportunities, customer lifecycle, and better manage resources.

CRM vs. CDP: Key differences

While both platform types process data for the best sales outcomes, they have some key differences.CRMs shine in the following use cases:

• Increasing customer lifetime value
• Increasing cross-selling and upselling
• Improving customer service
• Gaining insights into customer behavior

On the other hand, here are some ideal CDP uses:

• Executing data-driven marketing campaigns
• Managing the marketing lifecycle
• Unifying and segmenting your customer data
• Use by marketers

Another significant difference is in how CRMs and CDPs collect data.

CDP and CRM data collection methods

Every business ingests some form of first-party data (data that is provided directly by the customer). This may include contact information like phone numbers or emails, job titles, names, purchased products, subscriptions, or even addresses. CRM data is usually gathered manually. This means sales development representatives (SDRs) gather contact information through sign-up forms, emails, social media interactions, or surveys. On the other hand, CDP data is collected automatically through avenues including web tracking, mobile apps, APIs, and integrations.

Who should use a CRM?

Are you a sales or billing team? Do you offer customer support? You’re the best candidate for the features and tools offered by a CRM. If you send quotes or work with outbound marketing strategies to contact potential customers who require direct interaction, a CRM is designed for you. CRMs enrich customer-facing roles by arming them with data, automation, and a single view of the customer. It’s important to note that CRMs and CDPs can work in tandem. In fact, depending on your marketing goals, it’s often best to integrate both into your workflow. As an example, Simon Data provides a list of all the platforms it integrates with in case you want to connect it to your existing CRM.  

Who should use a CDP?

CDPs combine zero-, first-, second-, and third-party data for more effective behind-the-scenes marketing. Marketing channels like social media, email marketing, and pay-per-click (PPC) make CDPs ideal for marketing teams who want to grow company revenue, expand market share, and market new product initiatives.

CRM example

One of the best examples of a CRM is Salesforce. As the leader in the CRM industry, Salesforce helps sales, service, and marketing teams deliver an exceptional customer experience through automation and features that speed up the lead outreach process.It enables personalized messaging that meets prospects where they are. As a CRM, Salesforce offers a more organized approach to selling that ultimately drives revenue.

CDP example

Simon CDP is a no-code customer data platform designed to help marketing and tech teams deliver results in the form of new customers and better retention. With the automation and tools needed to create a true omnichannel experience, Simon Data’s customer data platform enables teams to establish ongoing marketing funnels that are hyper-personalized and built with the customer in mind. Simon CDP’s invaluable features provide the functionality to meet all your marketing team’s needs:

• Audience management
• Email marketing campaigns
• Customer identity
• Predictive modeling
• Data unification
• Cross-channel orchestration
• Customer data segmentation

Let’s say you’re trying to build a recurring workflow that sends email messages to specific customer segments about special deals or seasonal offers. Simon Data’s dashboard simplifies the automated workflow creation process by enabling you to set your desired frequency, maximum period, date and time, and messaging. Simon CDP combines the automation and detailed data you need to execute highly personalized campaigns that won’t fall flat. Plus, it eliminates the need to work with siloed apps by unifying data collection with robust go-to-market tools.

Do more with Simon CDP

Gathering business intelligence is easier with a robust CDP built for data management. Once onboarded, it’s easier for marketing teams to create personalized campaigns across channels that drive results and increase revenue. Simon Data bridges the gap between brands and their customers. Request a Simon CDP demo today.

Originally posted on Attentive.comYou’ve heard the buzz phrases “mountains of data” and “information overload.” And it’s true—most organizations have more data at their fingertips than ever before. But the question surrounding data has shifted.While brands used to ask how to collect data, the million dollar question now is how can we unlock the data we have in a way to fully enable the customer journey across all channels and touchpoints?Recent research shows that data management has become a key marketing challenge. Knowing how and when to use the data that you've collected from all your different touchpoints—your website, marketing tools, systems, and programs—to deliver an optimal customer journey is where a CDP comes in.If you’re in charge of your brand's SMS marketing channel, a CDP can help you combine and use data from different interactions subscribers have had with your brand—both online and offline.

What is a customer data platform?

A customer data platform (CDP) manages customer data from multiple sources and combines it into a robust, centralized view. Think of it like this: A customer journey involves many touchpoints—social media, websites, chatbots, email, SMS, in-store, transactional interactions both online and off, customer support and more. A customer data platform manages all of these interactions to create a comprehensive and accurate customer profile.By having a full picture of each customer, you’re able to make data-informed decisions, and you can design more personalized and effective campaigns across all your marketing channels.‍

CDPs and the customer journey

Let’s say you’re in the market for a new TV. You start with an online search for “best TVs in 2022.” Next, you look at reviews of the TVs listed. You might do further research like, is QLED or LED better? What are the different HDMIs? You may even watch a TV-buying video guide.After your initial research is done, you’ll likely visit several retailers—online and offline—to compare pricing, shipping availability, and more. And that’s where customer data platforms fit in.A consumer often interacts with the brand they end up purchasing from several times across a variety of channels—whether that’s their website, social media, email marketing, store location, paid ads, and more. And with each visit, the experience should become more personalized.Every customer-brand interaction creates data that'll help you personalize the customer journey—and this is data that your CDP can help you unlock and access.

‍What’s the difference between a CDP and CRM?

CDPs and CRMs (customer relationship management systems) are easily mistaken for each other, but each has a distinct purpose. Understanding the differences can help you get more out of both tools.CRMs collect data to improve customer relationships. CDPs collect data to help understand your customers and their behavior. But let’s dig deeper.CRMs help brands organize and manage customer-facing interactions, and are typically designed to support customer-facing roles. Both Customer Service and Sales teams use CRMs. But marketers do, too. The goal of a CRM is to help you acquire and retain customers and improve person-to-person interactions. CRMs collect data from:

• Support tickets
• Website form fills
• Customer interactions with your team, which include calls or emails, follow-up communications, a customer’s past purchases, or a customer’s number of inquiries and support requests

A CRM tracks what happens between customers and your team. For example, let’s say a customer has submitted two support tickets; one is still open and one is closed. The CRM can send automated emails to the customer to let them know the status of their ticket and can generate a report that'll let your brand know the type of ticket, response time, and more. All of the information gathered by the CRM helps inform what steps to take to retain the customer.CDPs work more behind the scenes, as tools to help marketers activate their data in cross-channel campaigns. A CDP takes the data from centralized sources like a cloud data warehouse or other data repository, and augments it with data from a customer’s behavior and interactions to make it useful to brands. They transform data into easy-to-digest segments that you don’t need advanced data mining skills to work with.In other words, CDPs manage and store data, unify it, and unlock the value in it so you're able to turn insights into action. CDPs manage data from every potential touchpoint a customer might have with your brand, including:

• Your website
• Email
• SMS
• Social media
• Chatbots
• Loyalty programs
• And more

When integrated with your entire marketing tech stack, CRMs and CDPs provide a consistent, personalized customer experience.

What are CDPs used for?

If you have data you’re struggling to make sense of and use, an orchestration CDP that can manage, segment, and activate your data may be for you. There are four main types of customer data a CDP can use:

• Identity data: name, age, location, contact information
• Behavioral/transactional data: what devices a customer uses, website visits, social media engagement
• Qualitative data: how the customer heard about your brand, product ratings, attitude information such as favorite color
• Descriptive data: hobbies, career, anything lifestyle related

For example, a CDP can use transactional data (such as a page they visited on your website) and qualitative data (such as a five-star rating on a past purchase) to help you recommend products that reflect the customer’s interests and preferences.

CDPs give you a complete view of each customer

CDPs track all interactions your customer has with your brand. Imagine that a customer comes into your store and enters their phone number to join your loyalty program. They make a purchase that’s added to their profile. Your brand can use this data, along with seasonal trend data, to inform what offers to send them.

CDPs bring data together from different channels

Unifying separate channels across your tech stack is hard—data is often siloed. A CDP can help you make sense of how your customers are experiencing your brand over time, and across channels.

CDPs can help you further segment your audience

CDPs create real-time profiles based on touchpoints and events. Every time an action takes place—such as purchase history, cart abandonment, loyalty, app usage—the customer’s profile is updated, so you can deliver the most relevant experience to individuals across a variety of channels.You can use a CDP to build segments, manage segments, and review their performance. Ultimately, a CDP is a powerful tool that helps you manage and activate customer data to provide a more targeted, personalized customer experience.

CDPS can help orchestrate the customer journey

Some CDPs can help you fully orchestrate and automate the customer journey across all your tools and end channels. Sending the right message at the right time and on the right channel based on your customers’ specific actions, history, and profile means more impactful experiences.

Using a CDP to amplify your SMS strategy

An orchestration CDP is a great partner for your SMS marketing platform, and can extend the impact of SMS to work even more effectively in a cross-channel strategy. Together, they improve the overall customer experience. Given that our phone numbers are powerful identity markers, SMS is already an effective tool to collect zero- and first-party data, and to use that data to deliver highly personalized customer experiences.A CDP improves subscriber profiles with key data from other sources. This lets you broaden your dataset and deliver even better experiences via SMS and across your other marketing channels.Let’s say a customer has recently bought a dress on your website. The same customer has also engaged with your social posts that showcase gold jewelry. Your CDP can combine those two touchpoints and update the customer’s profile, to trigger a text message send recommending a gold necklace that goes with their new dress.The data works both ways. For example, your CDP can use data from your SMS campaigns (such as what types of messages or offers subscribers click-through on and go on to purchase) to fine-tune your audience targeting on paid ads.If you have customers who frequently repurchase a product, like vitamins or shampoo, you can use data from your CDP to find out how often they’re reordering. Then, automatically send a helpful text message reminder a week or two before to remind them to replenish.

Using a CDP to build out your zero- and first-party data strategy

CDPs are becoming more important as marketers rely less on third-party cookies due to privacy changes, and focus more on zero- and first-party data. When building out your strategy, here are some best practices to follow:

• Integrate your CDP with channels and data management platforms you're using to collect different data points.
• Progressively profile by collecting the right information at the right time rather than asking for everything upfront.
• Interpret the data in a way that helps you best understand customer intentions (for example, look at where the customer is, what they are trying to do, and what it looks like when they have a good experience).
• Don’t over-collect data without knowing how to use it—understand what you want to measure first, and create goals beforehand.
• Create a feedback loop—turning your results and insights into customer experience improvements—and make informed decisions that help with customer retention.

Choosing a CDP that helps harness and activate your data from any source can extend your marketing investments into a data-driven, cross-channel strategy. This allows you to drive hyper-segmented messages that coordinate seamlessly to inspire more meaningful customer experiences.