In the newest installment of the Data Unlocked Podcast, Jason Davis, Simon Data’s co-founder, and CEO, links up with Brad Jakeman, Co-Founder at Rethink Food and Senior Adviser at Boston Consulting Group.

The focus of this episode is consumer intentionality, a topic that came to light from Brad’s recent experience. He was tasked with helping a close friend find a good deal on a new car. Following several visits to an array of car dealership websites, Brad was now the target of aggressive marketing. His intention was never to purchase a car, and had more data been strung together, these sites would have known that Brad just bought two cars and is not in the market. He also has never purchased a car like the one his friend is shopping for.

In many, many instances, personalization in marketing, if not done correctly, is not adding to my relationship with the brand. In fact, it is being creepy. – Brad Jakeman

The goal of marketer’s campaigns should be to add value to consumers’ lives. As Jason notes, when used effectively to connect to consumer intentions, data can really entice behavior. But when not thoughtful, it can be a turnoff and a nuisance.

During the episode, Jason asks Brad what his recommendation is on measuring the success of personalized context. Brad mentions that many marketers solely think about what the sales outcome is. But, when a brand makes contact with you, whether it be by TV commercial, website pop-up, email or text, that brand is trying to be your “friend”. And we only keep around friends who add value to our lives. So next time you get one of these messages, ask yourself if it makes you smile or makes you feel closer to the brand. That’s an easy test.

This conversation about consumer intentionality and more on marketing continue throughout the remainder of this episode. You can check it out by clicking the button below.

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For the third consecutive quarter, Simon ranks as a “Leader” (top rating) in the G2 Fall Rankings for Customer Data Platforms (CDP).G2’s quarterly CDP Grid® ranks products based on customer satisfaction and market presence. This cycle, we held our spots as overall Leader, Momentum Leader, Enterprise Grid® Leader Mid-Market Leader and Best Support Mid-Market.

“At Simon, we continue to innovate, iterate and deliver solutions that help customer-centric brands be more successful and drive their business forward. We are thrilled to see this reflected by direct customer feedback from the latest G2 report.

The quarterly G2 rankings demonstrate Simon’s strength in leveraging data to deliver next-generation customer experiences. I’m proud to see Simon as a Leader for three consecutive quarters, and especially excited to celebrate our streak of receiving “Best Support” again.

–Jason Davis, CEO, and co-founder of Simon Data

G2 rankings depend on how verified users evaluate customer satisfaction, as well as data from online sources and social networks. Below are a few key testimonials from our fall reviewers. Highlights include Simon’s exceptional support, ease of use, and flexibility of the product.

Simon Data reviews sourced by G2

In short, these are only a few of the ratings that helped us qualify for these recognitions this fall. Check out the rest of our G2 reviews submitted by customers here:

This post serves as a summary of the live webinar from October 15th hosted by Snowflake and Simon Data with Travel & Leisure Co.

Everyone wants to be data-driven, but often there are mountains of challenges like siloed data or old methodology causing roadblocks. An important goal for brands is using data to deliver personalized experiences that customers expect and businesses need to drive growth.Many executives say they’re going to activate on their data, but teams need to be given the proper tools to do so. Many don’t have a strategy to unlock the value of data that combines business needs with technology. Often, an IT or business team may tackle this on their own, which keeps others in the dark.The solution at hand is to have a 360-degree view of customers upon which we can drive personalized messaging to any channel. So, the question becomes, how do we build this foundation of customer knowledge and activate it effectively?

Snowflake as the Foundation for Personalization

Thousands of organizations are sharing data constantly with their ecosystem. Snowflake serves as a central point to aggregate all customer data and create a unified customer profile. They also ensure all data is compliant with current GDPR standards and can drive analytics and personalization. Of utmost importance, they work with partners like Simon Data to ensure data is being utilized to its fullest potential.Snowflake can take a unified customer profile and send it to Simon to create rich segmentations that activate across all channels at scale.

Simon Unlocks Data

When using data, the goal is to apply it to drive business outcomes and speak to the customer about what they care about. Customer Data Platforms (CDP) span data collection, data modeling, and marketing activation; Simon falls into the last category as an Orchestration CDP helping brands leverage data they already have in their funnel. An effective CDP is about more than just spitting out analytics, it’s connecting data to drive business processes. Ultimately, it’s about putting data in the hands of marketers, enabling marketers to make better and quicker decisions.The Simon team also strongly believes in empowering marketers to work closely with engineering or product teams. We encourage brands to think about crafting marketing strategies where reporting is seamlessly and consistently accessible. As a result, we can continue to iterate and learn from what’s been done. This is why people who own the creation of customer experiences need to be able to have an understanding of data and personalization.Simon’s CEO, Jason Davis, describes the three pillars for data-driven marketing as:

• Invest centrally in data - leverage the data you have and build on top of your data strategy
• Democratize access - enable access to data for strategic insights and iterative execution
• Learn cross-functionally - Refine marketing strategies by ensuring data continuity

Travel & Leisure Leverages Both for Personalization at Scale

Travel and Leisure Co. initially started with channels that were separate from one another; attempts to orchestrate fell short because their legacy data provider couldn’t bring everything together. Their goals were to centralize data, connect central data repositories, and deploy models.After introducing Simon and Snowflake to their backend, Travel and Leisure Co. was able to connect channels and create a flawless consumer experience. Their ability to personalize cross-channel marketing for customers now means that wherever they go they get a consistent message. An example of this is Travel and Leisure Co.’s “vacation recommendations” which combines data about transaction history, inventory, demographics, and web activity to make suggestions to customers. Utilizing these data points, they were able to inspire members with destinations they will likely enjoy. As they see intent toward a destination, their recommendations become more granular. Of course, this personalization boosts performance across channels through more relevant and consistent messagingA central orchestration platform such as Simon allows Travel & Leisure Co. to maintain a history of cross-channel messages. Using the campaign history, they’re able to build a fractional attribution model based upon engagement quality and its time from conversion. Through this process, they have determined that their personalized comms far exceed generic messaging.Their teams are also now able to work on more interesting problems due to data automation and model integration from Simon, yielding time to launch even more marketing campaigns. Subsequently, teams are more data-driven as they introduce capabilities to measure the incrementality of their efforts.

The Three Takeaways

1. Break down data silos and unleash the full power of first-party data
2. Develop models to form the basis of communication - models won’t solve everything, but they’ll be able to serve as a construct
3. Measure and evolve tactics using a holistic view of performance - make sure attribution approaches align to the measure of success

Launch of Innovative New Capabilities and Extension of Market-Leading CDP Empowers Brands to Bring Dynamic Customer Experiences to Market Faster and Drive Business Results

Today, we announced the launch of two new products and a major expansion of Simon’s industry-leading CDP. These enhancements will help digitally native and growth-minded companies deliver next-generation customer experiences. This expands upon our core focus of enabling hyper-personalized and omnichannel customer marketing. Above all, this product fully unlocks customer data for the needs of today's modern marketing team. There are many complex data challenges faced by customer-focused, growth-oriented brands. Consequently, Simon’s new suite of capabilities expedite a marketer's time to value. It seamlessly integrates real-time and historical first-party data across its numerous tools and sources into a unified, comprehensive platform. Simon’s cross-channel marketing platform enables CMOs and CTOs to have deeper aligned partnerships, eliminating the blocks between engineers, data analysts and scientists, and those in operational marketing roles. As a result, this next-generation technology helps marketing leaders transform AI and data investments into results and outcomes. Furthermore, it enables marketing teams to affect highly personalized interactions through advanced experimentation, iterative workflows, and a powerful optimization toolkit.[caption id="attachment_9767" align="aligncenter" width="600"]

Simon Data's CDP architecture was created to make omnichannel marketing simple for all.[/caption]“Simon Data is charging forward to enable marketers to fully activate their data. This is what we believe to be the future of marketing systems and CDP. We are bridging technology, workflows, and data science to automate processes that drive better results,” said Jason Davis, CEO & co-founder of Simon Data. The CDP features two new products and enhanced capabilities within Simon Predict for its market-leading CDP product. [caption id="attachment_9768" align="aligncenter" width="600"]

The new Simon Mail makes email campaigns easy for marketers from design to execution and everything in between.[/caption]

The latest edition includes:

• Simon Journeys - The newly redesigned Simon Journeys helps marketers quickly brainstorm, build, and version customer experiences. In addition, it features tools that target and personalize content across channels, using Simon’s deep data to optimize content delivery.

• Simon Mail - This ESP is differentiated from legacy email tools that require marketers to manage everything from data integrations to personalization. Moreover, Simon Mail automates processes to help email marketers boost revenue per email, build eye-popping dynamic content, and access world-class campaign metrics and deliverability reporting.

• Simon Predict - Delivering predictive models for every marketer to build better messaging and campaigns, it integrates machine learning capabilities. Subsequently, it delivers transparent customer insights and injects predictive intelligence directly into the workflows of CRM, cross-channel, lifecycle, and end-channel marketers. As a result, this makes every interaction more relevant while boosting sales and revenue.

New supporting CDP features include:

• Audience API - A highly personalized way for marketers to create unique customer experiences across channels.

• Real-Time Content - An external API that enables relevant, up-to-the-minute data personalization for relevant messaging.

• Snowflake Data Share - An easy way to flexibly export data from Simon to BI tools for additional analysis outside of Simon.

• Smart Segments, Journeys, and Insights - Designed to empower marketers to deploy strategies quickly, leverage best practices and deliver better performance.

“By investing in developing these next-generation tools and CDP features, we’re providing our clients with powerful solutions. They speed up the delivery of unique and effective messaging to reduce churn, increase revenue, and discover new audiences,” said DavisTo learn more, register for the Turn Data into Outcomes - Think Smarter. Act Faster. Be More Effective. webinar on November 4 at 1pm ET / 10am PT.

Why You Don’t Need Third-Party Data for Your Personalized Marketing

CDP Institute recently teamed up with Simon Data to release a white paper that examines the future of data in our increasingly privacy-centric world. Over the last few years, a few things have happened to make gathering customer data more difficult- GDPR, CCPA, Apple’s blocking third party cookies, and app tracking transparency have all culminated in the most recent announcement by Google regarding third party cookies.

via GIPHYThe prospect of a cookieless future has been worrisome for many companies, but just because you’re losing access to third-party data doesn’t mean you have to be dataless. Conversely, it just means you have to rely on the other types of data to do the heavy lifting. Simply put, the future of customer data is first-party and zero-party data.

What is the Difference Between Zero- and First-Party Data?

Let’s start with the basics:

What is First-Party Data?

First-party data is information your business collects about its customers. While some is provided directly, for the most part, first-party data is captured from observed customer behavior. Common examples of this may include products viewed, videos streamed, or purchase history.And although consumers consent to this data being collected, they often don’t realize it is being stored for future company use. This paradox is one of the critical differences between first-party and zero-party data.

What is Zero-Party Data?

In contrast, zero-party data is information a customer intentionally provides. Ways we typically see this data collected is by responding to a survey, making a request, or answering a quiz.Because this customers give this information voluntarily, you can get more accurate information that customers want you to improve their experience. An additional benefit is because your company is the one that dictated the question, the answers can directly relate to information you want to know. For example, which products a customer is interested in buying or feel about a recent experience.

How to Leverage First- and Zero-Party Data in a Post-Cookies World

The benefit of using first and zero-party data over third-party data is the accuracy of information. Because this information comes directly from the customer, the data is more reliable and adds more value to the customer experience. First-party data allows you to anticipate customer needs. One such example is making recommendations based on past purchases or likes. Zero-party data can make recommendations, but goes a step further than first-party data. Because zero-party data comes from questioning your customer base, it can account for switching tastes and lifestyle changes.

How to Optimize Your Personalized Marketing with Simon Data’s Customer Data Platform

Although losing access to third-party cookies may seem like a massive shift, most companies are already collecting some of first-party and zero-party data. What a CDP helps make cookieless futures not have to be dataless futures.Optimization is possible by identifying critical data points as a starting block and then adding, subtracting, and iterating via advanced experimentation. In this process, prioritize first-party and zero-party data. However, this data can live in several different places. It is crucial to make sure you can easily access and activate all data in one place using the right tools. Make sure you have one tool that can get you the data you need, turn it into the data you want, and use it where it matters.

Why a CDP?

A CDP allows you to see all of your data in one place. This accessibility means you can test, learn, and iterate customer experiences based on past data. Noting points such as where dropoff is occurring in the collection process can be vital to optimizing your customer journey. Some ways of optimizing include:

• Segment: identity and purposefully target the right customer
• Content: tailor your communications in a way that delivers the value promised
• Results: Test and iterate on segments and content to deliver the promised impact

The first step is collecting data you own, such as first-party and zero-party data. The second step is syncing relevant data in one location to create unique and tailored experiences. This tailoring is made possible through advanced experimentation and continual iteration on the experiences for continued optimization and impact.For more information on how a CDP helps optimize your use of customer data, watch our video on The 5 Secret Powers of a CDP.

In a recent interview by CIO, Mihir Shah, Head of Data Architecture for Fidelity Investments, and Jason Davis, CEO and Founder of Simon Data, sat down to discuss the evolution of Fidelity's data strategy. Central to this discussion is a vision known as "the next-generation data pipeline." Foundational expanding the scope and impact of data beyond traditional lines of engineering ownership and reporting applications. Fidelity's next generation of data applications involves fully unlocking the power of data across the enterprise. This starts with transforming traditional ownership outside of core data and engineering functions to enable business stakeholders including marketing to drive core processes forward with measurable results.In moving towards this vision, Fidelity embarked on a journey consisting of three core steps. The first step was centralizing their data into a scalable cloud data environment. Next, Fidelity aimed to democratize data to permit access across the organization. Finally, they sought to enable business functions with the right applications to transform processes to be fully data-driven.While Fidelity’s steps are simple, the idea is quite ambitious and requires complex execution. Yet, the difficulty level did not deter the team from the goal of transforming the data pipeline, making data available and utilized by everyone.

Step One: Data Centralization

Historically, Fidelity's data existed in disparate systems and databases that were developed over many years as their capabilities matured. The business had a myriad of data across the organization but no centralized way of maintaining, cataloging, and joining disparate sources.Before investing in a cloud data warehouse, data lived in silos across various departments - and Shah clearly understood the limitations of their fragmented architecture. However, he had a strong vision of how centralized architecture would solve this problem and drive business outcomes.

Step Two: Data Democratization

With a centralized data model, the next obstacle towards Fidelity's core vision was one of access. While accessibility starts with data in a centralized place, it also involves active data management and providing views into data that are purposeful and domain-specific.To illustrate this point, let’s kick-off with an abbreviated quote from Mihir demonstrating the value of centralized data:

“...All data sets are in one place and are managed by the data owners. There is a full catalog, everybody knows where the data is <and> it's easily accessible. And then there are products <that> are working on leveraging the datasets..” -Mihir Shah

Jason adds on to this point by expressing the value in combining datasets :

“ <The> data becomes richer as you pull in third-party, supplier, and partner sources. 15 years ago you had an on-prem data warehouse with a star schema, and you'd never think about any transformations outside... We've fully outgrown that model today. When you look at the richness of data, there's a notion that we call the last mile data transformations...you take two datasets and you can have a third. When you start to have access to a whole new world of data..<then you can> really look at the complexity of the applications and the opportunities that now exist from a marketing perspective.”-Jason Davis

The idea here is - while there is value in combining datasets to get a third and more encompassing dataset, there is also value in getting these datasets into the hands of the data owners creates opportunities to drive desired outcomes.

Step Three: Data Enablement

Ultimately, the power of data is how you use it - Shah and Davis go on to discuss "the next-generation data pipeline" in more detail. The first tenet of data usage starts with the level of effort required to build, modify, and iterate data pipes that drive business processes:

When data operations become easier, capabilities can transcend to a more strategic level:

“I think so many of the existing use cases for either are getting migrated off of on-prem data warehouses or data marts...And those are important use cases...<that> can certainly be enabled with the cloud and centralization...But really, the vision we're driving towards is this next tranche of how data is used outside of just the analytics, modeling, and insights.”

Circling back to our opening clip of Shah, he discusses wanting to target every aspect of the business to make Fidelity more data-driven as a whole. The power of an enhanced data pipeline is touching every aspect of the business.

“Whether it's procurement or somebody who's looking at expense reports for fraud. So, if you look around your enterprise, there are so many different processes that can just be simple... It may not be a complex model, just the availability of data. They can actually enhance... The job becomes much easier or better.” -Mihir Shah

Conclusion

While a successful data strategy starts with centralizing data from across an organization, fully affecting the strategy requires enabling teams outside of data & technology. As Fidelity looks forward, developing the people, processes, and systems required to affect this is critical. This “next-generation data pipeline” is about re-thinking how data is used & deployed through the organization - for not just reporting or insights purposes but to drive forward core business processes within marketing and beyond.

In September 2021, Apple released iOS 15, the much-anticipated rollout of their new Privacy Protection features. With these privacy updates, marketers are seeing an impact on their data collection. Possibly the most significant impact marketers face from the iOS 15 privacy update is a decrease in the accuracy of open rates. Going forward, email opens will no longer be an indicator that a human has opened a message. And while open events have not been an accurate measure of human interest, they have been the most accessible metric for marketers to utilize for making deliverability decisions. With this additional layer of inaccuracy, marketers must shift how they look at recipient engagement to be less focused on open events and more focused on other data points. This additional context could more accurately indicate a genuine interest from the human receiving the message.

Short Term Impact of iOS 15 Privacy Updates

While the email industry doesn’t fully know how these changes will impact senders, what we do know is that Apple’s Privacy Protection will:

• Increase the number of open events regardless of whether or not users opened the message
• Impact the accuracy of this data for recipients across all domains- iOS15 Mail app users that opt-in will utilize email addresses at all mailbox providers
• Decrease the accuracy of timestamp, device, and location information

Using More Data in Email Deliverability

Traditionally, marketers rely on open events to identify potential inboxing problems and to identify unengaged subscribers. Therefore, marketers will need to adjust how they look for this kind of information moving forward to make the most accurate decisions on deliverability. To identify potential inbox problems, senders will need to expand their view of data and trends to be more accurate in their assumptions. Senders will still look to open rates as a factor but will need to include more data points in their calculations. For example, by comparing changes in open rates to other datasets like click rates and conversions, senders can understand how mailbox providers process their messages. Similarly, when senders decide who to target to protect or repair their deliverability results, metrics like last opened or messages since last opened won’t be as effective moving forward. Thus, senders will need to also adjust the logic of their sunset and frequency to utilize metrics like clicks and conversions to supplement what open data tells them.

iOS 15 Privacy Updates Effect on Email Marketing Decisions

Marketers certainly utilize open event data for more than making deliverability decisions. Modern marketers have become experts at crafting compelling marketing journeys that walk recipients through curated experiences engaging with particular messages. Losing this visibility poses a challenge to marketers.Similarly, it will also be critical to shift what metrics are considered in determining what is not a likely human interaction with email messaging. Again, looking at other metrics like clicks and conversions will be most helpful. Additionally, marketers who can craft email experiences that drive the engagements that are more quickly and accurately measured will have the easiest time adjusting to the new reality of iOS 15’s privacy updates. Relying on the email to deliver the entirety of the message and fully convert a recipient to a call to action will become harder to measure. Marketers should use the email body to quickly move the recipient to the next journey or conversion. This transition provides more accurate first or zero-party data, giving marketers more substantial insight into how their content performs with recipients. Finally, marketers will also have to deal with how these privacy changes impact the use of things like dynamic content or location data to enhance the email experience for recipients. Keeping in mind the data used to make decisions will be limited in accuracy will help marketers craft content and CTAs geared to drive measurable results.

How a CDP Can Help

Current email privacy updates mean the most important thing marketers can do is look at data points. These data points will help them understand whether their messages are reaching and converting people. Using email metrics like clicks and click rates will undoubtedly be critical. Marketers who understand how their recipients have been engaging with their messages historically will be better equipped to make sense of future changes. Examining historical open and click trends by mailbox provider or domain can provide a wealth of insight once open rates start to change due to Apple’s new features. However, when it comes to making sense of the ever-changing marketing landscape and signals across various channels, there is no substitute for using a CDP like Simon Data. CDPs bring clarity to increasingly opaque signals.While cross-channel messaging has already shown itself to be a critical component of a modern marketer’s strategy, changes like Apple’s introduced point toward the growing importance of cross-channel measurement and analysis. Email metrics and events should no longer be viewed in a vacuum. Regardless of how we communicate, measuring recipients’ engagement with your brand is the key to sanity. Checking those channel-specific signals will make more impactful decisions. Utilizing a CDP gives marketers the tools to connect the dots between seemingly disparate data points. Thus, more quickly and effectively drawing a more holistically accurate picture of marketing efficacy.Download The Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing Software to learn how a CDP can help make the most of your data.

In the newest installment of the Data Unlocked Podcast, Jason Davis, Simon Data’s co-founder and CEO, links up with Abby Feuer, DonorsChoose’s Executive Vice President of Marketing and Growth. They chat about utilizing customers’ past behaviors to create data-driven marketing personalization.

DonorsChoose is a nonprofit charity on a mission to make it easy for teachers and students to access the resources they need for a strong education. DonorsChoose faces the at-times difficult task of getting a steady stream of donors. After 21 years of positively impacting students across the nation, Feuer shares how her team has found success through several personalization methods. These include word of mouth, creating moments in the space, and targeting (and retargeting) personas.

Word of Mouth

It may seem old school, but DonorsChoose relies heavily on storytelling from existing benefactors; the organization believes that the best way to build trust is through a friend’s recommendation. While it sounds simple, DonorsChoose has several personalized email touchpoints that can spark these memorable conversations that might lead to a donation down the line. Feuer notes donors get a thank you note from the teacher, photos of the project in action, and a report on how the classroom used each dollar. The follow-ups from DonorsChoose often continue for months after an initial donation. This period allows for several opportunities for supporters to resurface their contributions with others in person or on social media. Additionally, these touchpoints drive visits back to the DonorsChoose website.

Most teachers who share their projects on DonorsChoose have been introduced to the program by word of mouth mention from friends, family, or colleagues. There are also seminars that teachers can attend to help onboard the platform and bring their vision to life.

These data-driven personalization efforts are often enough to encourage donors to share their experiences with others or even make a second contribution to a project. When there are lulls in classroom updates, DonorsChoose identified another method to re-engage contributors.

Memorable Moments

Feuer mentions that July and August, when teachers are preparing for the year ahead, are the most popular times for projects to be created and receive donations. Teacher Appreciation Week in May also garners a peak in attention on the platform. For the other nine months of the year, DonorsChoose has found success by spotlighting big moments that catch the attention of former contributors by creating a sense of urgency.

“We can create moments, like something around our anniversary with our most engaged donors, where we resurface the first project they ever gave to, to inspire them to give again. We rely on a lot of automated emails and messages based on historical preferences and giving behavior and then these big events throughout the year to drive reengagement.”

-Abby Feuer

These moments are when having historical and event-driven customer data can help marketers target the right people at the right time with compelling messages. Through Simon Data, DonorsChoose can view customer real-time and historical data in one place. An event that interests a donor based on their previous habit triggers a message alerting the donor of this item of interest. This sequence has proven to be effective in garnering more donations during these critical times. While these events have proven successful, DonorsChoose has also found success by learning more about their donors and patterns.

Targeting Personas with Data-Driven Personalization

Simon Data also enables DonorsChoose to build segments around supporters who have already contributed. There are two factors that Feuer mentions are crucial in retargeting:

1. Is there loyalty to a specific teacher?
2. Is there a specific community or purpose that resonates?

Often friends or family members will support teachers in their life year-after-year to help their classrooms thrive. Others may focus on a sentimental donation to a school they attended or a cause that is close to their heart. It’s easy for DonorsChoose to send a follow-up message using Simon Mail if a favored teacher or school adds a new project or if a specific cause needs funding. Other factors that can strengthen personalized outreach include the acquisition source and how much money is required to complete the project.

Again, the key piece here is messaging donors at the right time with the right message to catch their attention. If you recall from episode three of the Data Unlocked series, finding the perfect moment is something Vivino struggled to capture. People don’t like receiving daily or non-purposeful emails. Digging into customer data is how marketers grow to understand who they are targeting and when the right time is to reach them.

“What we have learned through research is that even if you’ve planned out how much you want to give to nonprofits in that year, through a compelling email or event, we can get you to give again. If you see a project that is related to a childhood memory, a geographic preference that matters to you, et cetera, we can inspire you to donate even if you weren’t planning to.”

-Abby Feuer

Summary

Data-driven personalization has always been important to DonorsChoose methodology; the organization has completed over two million projects by prioritizing them. Notably, the crowded nonprofit space makes it challenging at times to get noticed. As Feurer and Davis discuss on the podcast, a personalized campaign funnel can help distinguish one charity from the rest. DonorsChoose optimizes its marketing cadence and segmentation with Simon Mail, allowing the organization to craft campaigns and messaging driven by unified data. Thus, the impact of personalization speaks for itself, with over 5 million donors to the charity.

Contribute to teachers in need using DonorsChoose – find a cause (or two) that resonates with you and help teachers supply books, cleaning supplies, technology, and more to help students get back to learning.

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How To Use Personalization To Ensure Your Subscription Brand Never Falls Victim To The Monthly Purge

Subscription brands can be some of the most challenging to market. While one-time purchases can be necessary or written off as a well-deserved splurge, subscriptions face regular scrutiny. If your customers are feeling bored with their subscription or underwhelmed with the service, they are more than likely to churn and once they’ve canceled, it can be difficult to win them back. So, how can subscription brands use customer data to thrive in a cutthroat market? Personalization strategies that brands have turned to in order to differentiate their experience and offer more value to their subscribers. In this post, we’ll dive into some best practices that’ll take your subscription brand’s personalization strategy to the next level.

The Time And Place For Personalization

Today, customers know that they’re participating in a trade-off when offering their personal data to brands. In return for data, they should receive benefits and convenience. However, the “creepy” factor is undeniable, and the payoff is often unsatisfying. As a result, customers regularly report negative attitudes towards personalized ads. So does that mean marketers should stop using them? The “Privacy Paradox” tells us: no. Messages, ads, and other personalized content almost always out-perform the alternative when it comes to engagement and open rates. Despite negative feelings about personalization, when content is personalized in a way that adds benefit or convenience for the customer, they’re more than willing to hand over their data. When it comes to building your personalization strategy, staying on the right side of the Privacy Paradox means that your goal should be to build a thoughtful experience that establishes a meaningful relationship with your customer. With that in mind, start by framing your strategy around your customer’s needs and challenges rather than focusing on the end result of revenue. Your customer data can be a great source of inspiration for understanding your customer. For instance, you can use implicit or behavioral data to understand their psyche:

• How many orders has a customer placed?
• How many times have they upgraded their subscription or changed their preferences?
• Have they attempted to use features unavailable within their subscription tier?
• How often do they engage with your product, website, or app?

These details can tell you what challenges a customer is encountering, how comfortable they are with the order process, or what extra information they need to take the next best step.If someone upgrades their subscription, you can then send them an email explaining new features of their subscription. If they’re trying to use features they don’t have access to, it calls for a message highlighting all of the membership tiers and the perks of each one. These examples aren’t super sales-y, but are timely and directly push customers towards a solution to their problem. Basically, put yourself in your customers’ shoes. Ask yourself “if I encountered this issue, or took this action, what would I want or need in response?”

Data-Driven Personalization Strategies and Segmentation Best Practices

At Simon Data, we view segmentation as a form of personalization - it can be 1-to-many or 1-to-few, as opposed to 1-to-1 personalization. Without some heavy investments in machine learning technology, it can be difficult for subscription brands to achieve the dream of a true 1-1 experience. However, segmentation can offer a low-lift strategy to ensure that every customer is receiving communication that’s helpful and relevant to them.

How to Build Your Segments

Segments are built by identifying the general sets of customers engaging with your brand and then grouping them by their behaviors, differentiators, and the data points that highlight or describe those differences. Some key segments for subscription brands include:

• Leads - visitors that have converted in some way but have not yet purchased a subscription.
• New subscribers - new subscribers to your service
• Active subscribers - customers that have retained their subscription for a period of time
• Returning subscribers - customers that have resubscribed after churning
• Inactive subscribers: subscribers who have churned.
• Gift or promotional subscribers: customers that were given a subscription as a gift, or customers that converted using some sort of promotion or discount.

There are additional dimensions through which you can further segment these customer groups, including:

• Customer lifetime value - the total value of a customer to a business throughout the entirety of their relationship
• Category affinity - subscribers who demonstrate preference for a certain type of content or product.
• Location - geographical location can inform what products you promote.
• Level of engagement - how frequently the customer uses the product, service, and other channels (social media, website, add-ons)

But just because you know a lot about each customer doesn’t mean all of that information is helpful. Testing your way into personalization is a great way to measure the effectiveness of the campaign, and the impact on your desired segment. You have to build your data foundation first to ensure your personalization strategies are relevant and useful. Starting with segments with recurring sends or journeys to optimize customer experience can be even more effective. Once you’ve experimented to pinpoint which journeys make for a better CX with segmentation, you can then lean into personalizing those segments in ways that add further value. When all of your customers are subscribed for different reasons, creating these broad segments can be the most time-efficient way to personalize to their individual needs. Ultimately, where you start with your personalization/segmentation strategy depends on your existing data. Start with what makes sense based on where you are now, and the rest will follow.

What Customers Really Want

Personalization done right can be a great way to build relationships through marketing. So, does that mean that all personalization strategies are effective? Not exactly. We know that customers are willing to trade off some privacy for convenience and clear value, but it’s pretty obvious when you’re asking for information that you don’t really need. For example, if you’re looking for personalization opportunities for your subscription meal kit, you probably don’t need to know your customers’ date of birth - especially if the only thing you’re doing with it is sending a “happy birthday” message. The sentiment is nice, but if it doesn’t fit in with the existing relationship you have with your customers, there’s no real reason to do so. An exception here is if you’re sending them a special birthday discount, or a special meal with their shipment. Not only is it relevant for a meal kit brand, but it shows your customers that you value their business and are willing to go the extra mile. Acts of appreciation - big or small - demonstrate them the value behind providing you with personal information. The deciding factor when it comes to collecting data needs to be whether or not the experience the information would enable solves a customer problem, provides value, or strengthens a relationship. To identify what data you need and what you can declutter, you need to have a conversation about what problems you want to solve, and what information you would need to make it happen. Working from the problem or goal towards the solution, instead of from existing data to a conclusion, is more time-efficient, and is ultimately more impactful in heightening your customer experience.

A Tool to Simplify the Process

That said, it’s clear that personalization strategies are tricky - especially for subscription brands. Overall, the best way to simplify the process is to use a Customer Data Platform, like Simon, which enables marketers to access and use all of their customer data to build and launch deeply personalized experiences and campaigns without having to rely on IT or engineering. To learn more about Customer Data Platforms, check out The Definitive Guide to Customer Data Platforms. Or, see how our CDP enabled pet subscription brand, Bark Box to automate data pulls and segmentation, rapidly experiment and iterate on targeted cohorts, and optimize targeting, timing, and messaging, by reading our case study.

In the latest installment of the Data Unlocked Podcast, Jason Davis, Simon Data’s co-founder and CEO, connects with Mayur Gupta, Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer at the USA Today Network. They discussed the intersection of technology and storytelling- how businesses can use data to disrupt markets. However, in order to see the best results, there needs to be buy-in from both technical and non-technical roles. But how do you get both to work together harmoniously? We’re breaking down how Gupta uses shared OKRs, cross-functional collaboration, and data-driven creativity for powerful marketing outcomes.

Shared Goals and Objectives

Oftentimes, marketing has to work with other teams to accomplish their goals. However, this collaboration doesn’t always go smoothly.

In a study commissioned by Forrester Consulting, we found that a lack of collaboration leads to missed opportunities. In that study, 95% of respondents have experienced negative business impacts as a result of the marketing and strategy challenges. These challenges include missed opportunities, decreased customer satisfaction, missed strategic growth opportunities, increased costs, and lowered engagement. Organizations need to close these collaboration gaps.

The dream is teams working together harmoniously to reach shared goals. In reality, every team has its own goals – and they’re mostly unrelated. Even if they are willing to help coworkers, time and focus is taken away from their main goals. This leads to collaborative efforts taking a back seat to individual priorities. One way to enable effective cross-functional collaboration is by ensuring that both teams have individual KPIs that feed into a shared OKR. Using cross-functional pods with a joint OKR invests disparate teams in a common goal, which ultimately leads to frictionless collaborative work.

“The idea is that we strongly believe that the big rocks are going to be moved when our cross-functional powerhouses come together. They have very tangibly defined key results in OKRs. We look at those monthly and quarterly. And you check-in and tell us, and it all ladders up to a company OKR, which is, again, all of this is a whole new rhythm, as part of our evolution as a company. “

–Mayur Gupta

Setting joint goals via shared OKRs is a good first step in fostering collaboration between teams. But how do you foster true collaboration that combines intuition and technical prowess for the best outcomes?

True Cross-Functional Collaboration

Gupta is a believer in the philosophy that for true cross-functional collaboration, getting people thinking about not only the what, but the why, is key.

Often, the question tends to be “what are we doing” or “what should we be doing.” However, Gupta challenges teams to instead ask “why are we doing”. Based on that answer, is there a better solution that leads us to this outcome? Gupta provokes these thoughts from his team by having the cross-functional pods meet monthly to talk about the data. Having members of all teams involved in the decision-making process helps people buy into monthly, quarterly, or yearly goals.

He insists that while reports are important, the core pods should slice and dice the data daily. Team members should be living and breathing analysis in their day-to-day. Honing analytical skills takes practice and upkeep, and keeping that brainpower within a closed system can take your business to the next level.

“Every month, there’s a data read-out for the entire company. It’s a hardcore insight session, where we’re just talking about what we learned in the last 4 weeks. What trends are we seeing? Why do we think that is happening? The focus is on the ‘what’ – but more importantly, on the ‘why we believe it could be happening. It leads to a lot of great questions.”

-Mayur Gupta

So, while we’ve covered the importance of data transparency and analytical skills, there’s still a missing key factor. When your company is data-empowered and collaborating efficiently, how do you maintain curiosity and creativity around that data?

Data Inspired Over Data Dependent

Business leaders are firm on the idea that data is a powerful enabler, but it’s not an end-all solution. Data isn’t creative, data isn’t intuitive, and it can’t always tell you what your next steps should be.

“There’s a tendency to become data-dependent, where you become paralyzed until the data shows you the path forward. That’s a very dangerous place to be in for a company because data gives you a lot of false positives.”

-Mayur Gupta

If this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s a point that we’ve heard on the Data Unlocked Podcast before. In a previous episode, Colin Zima, Chief Analytics Officer and VP of Strategy at Looker said that “while data science can solve complex problems in a vacuum, people can consider variable situations.”

Gupta explains that he challenges himself and his team – “don’t lose serendipity, don’t lose common sense and irrationality of decision-making.” Basically, don’t get lost in the numbers. Data can do a lot, but if the numbers aren’t adding up, take a step back and open up the problem to a larger team. Test your data. Run experiments. Try things that you don’t think will work. Enable your org to do things that your data can’t.  Ultimately, their intuition and collective experiences are who’s driving measurable results – not the numbers.

Data Democratization

Overall, the best possible way to make sure everyone is aligned and empowered to make data-informed (not dependent) decisions is to have a centralized data hub. A data hub consolidates and stores all company data in one location – where everyone can access it. Simon Data’s CDP is one such hub. CDPs also help cross-functional collaboration by letting everyone see the data and allowing data manipulation by people in non-technical roles. Instead of waiting for data teams to create segments for marketing campaigns, marketers can personally create segments while still relying on technical teams to interpret and analyze the resulting data.

Data and metrics should always be at the center of a company’s goals and objectives. However, knowing how to make the data work across the entire organization isn’t always easy. By aligning all teams around shared OKRs, you can increase efficiency and collaboration, but making data accessible to all teams offers the greatest amount of transparency and understanding all around.  To learn more about what a CDP can do for your company, watch our video on the 5 Secret Powers of a CDP.

LISTEN TO THE FULL DATA UNLOCKED PODCAST

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CDP RFP Selection Process

In a recent webinar, Seth Solomons, former CMO of Equinox, spoke with the CEO of Simon Data, Jason Davis, about the CDP RFP and selection process. They begin by observing exceptionally complicated martech space; numerous products and platforms in the space rarely work seamlessly together. However, a customer data platform (CDP) is the light at the end of the tunnel. It allows these various platforms to communicate by bringing all customer data points into one place and turns them into actionable insights.However, the CDP space is also vast. They offer a variety of solutions for various problems. Which begs the question- once you've established you need a CDP, how do you go about finding which one best fits your organization's goals?

Here are the five areas to be sure you hit during the RFP process:

• Data management
• Analytics and intelligence
• Cross channel orchestration
• Privacy, security, compliance
• Platform and services

Data Management

Data management is collecting and storing data in a secure location. This collection helps companies optimize data usage while still keeping the data protected. There are three main ways a CDP helps with data management- ingestion, access, and profile unification. These three pieces work together to give you a complete customer view. Data ingestion is the ability to gather, standardize, and validate data from online and offline sources. Next, this data is stored in a centralized location to be accessed, used, and analyzed. In other words, no matter where your data is coming from, a CDP can receive and translate it into a unified customer profile. This profile is like the holy grail of understanding your customer- everything you need to know about them in one place.Moreover, this information is also available for every team to view. Making data accessible to all departments is crucial to the success of cross-functional teams. Not only does it free up time from having to do manual data pulls, but it ensures everyone is using the same information when running a campaign. All teams being able to view the same data is also essential to cohesive analytics.

Analytics and Intelligence

Data analytics and intelligence is combing through existing data via modeling, reporting, and transforming to find actionable insights that can support company decision-making .We live in a data-driven world. All companies want to make informed decisions based on what they know about their customers. However, there is often a workflow bottleneck between ideation and execution based on the bandwidth of the data team. What a CDP offers is assistance in segmentation, experimentation, and predictive modeling to speed up the workflow. The exploration and understanding of target audiences cannot be a function of your data engineering teams. It has to go into the marketers' hands. After all, marketers will ultimately define and execute campaigns over the segments. A CDP should offer assistance in segmentation, experimentation, and predictive modeling to speed up the workflow. This streamline enables data engineers to quickly and easily get data into the system while empowering marketers to build intuition and experiment with slicing and dicing audiences.During the RFP process, be sure you should have a clear idea of what segmentation capabilities come out of the box and how the building capabilities work. The goal is to find a platform with an easy-to-use interface that allows non-technical roles to work independently of their technical counterparts.

Cross Channel Orchestration

Cross channel orchestration is the ability to deliver customers rich and meaningful experiences through whichever channel they may be interacting with you. A customer's path to purchase is more complex than ever. Additionally, many customers use multiple channels when buying or researching products making tracking their customer journey increasingly difficult. Without a CDP, team members find themselves bogged down in carefully constructing segments for every necessary end channel. However, bigger problems start to arise when every channel doesn't fall under the responsibility of an "omnichannel manager." This lack of orchestrated messaging will often result in inconsistent, duplicate, or over messaging for customers. However, orchestrating customer journeys from a single place can help that confusion. The unified customer view updates in real-time and allows all of marketing to look at the same data. It also enables all teams to use the same segments for overall consistency and deeper personalization.

Privacy, Security, Compliance

Data privacy, security, and compliance all serve as different pieces of best practices around data. However, they are all designed to protect your organization.

Privacy

Companies handle a ton of customer data. Customers gave this data under certain pretenses. They are entrusting companies to use their information wisely and thoughtfully to enhance their brand experience. The last thing any company wants is to lose their customer's trust by mishandling their data. Likewise, CDPs inherently handle massive amounts of PII and other customer data. Therefore, their technology and security practices must be certified as compliant with privacy laws.

Security

While data privacy is about how a company uses and shares customer information, security is what the company does to protect said data. There is an abundance of measures a company can take to protect data stored on their server. What's important is you are asking the right questions about who has access to your data, how they mitigate risk, and what happens when a breach occurs. By understanding these questions, both know how secure your customer information is and that you aren't at fault if something would happen.

Platform and Service

We touched on this at the beginning of this blog, and I'd like to revisit the depth of CDP options. There are a variety of CDPs, most of which do similar but different things. It is crucial to understand the platform's offering and how it aligns with your business goals. Another point Seth touched on in the webinar, which he cited as his reason for choosing Simon, is service. You want to look for a brand that treats you like a partner and is available to give you the support you need throughout the onboarding process. Your goal is to find a CDP that understands your company goals and wants to be there to help you achieve them. The RFP process is in place to ensure your company finds the best solution for its needs. If you have any questions on selecting the right CDP checkout or CDP Buyer's Guide, or if you're ready to start the RFP process, download our free RFP template!

Today’s marketing landscape is complex. There’s a ton of competition, customers are more informed than ever, and brand loyalty is dwindling. In a recent survey, only 8% of customers thought of themselves as firm loyalists. In other words, customers want what they want when they want it. Knowing the best time to interact is essential to keeping their business. Therefore, having a clear lifecycle marketing strategy is the best way to keep customers engaged.

In a recent webinar hosted by Industry Dive, Danielle Henneberger, Director of Strategic Advisory at Simon Data, meets up with Annie Jalto, Senior CRM marketing manager at Vivino, to discuss the dos and don’ts of lifecycle marketing. To that point, they open up about common misconceptions of lifecycle marketing and how to avoid them.

Best Practices, That Aren’t

1. The Marketing Lifecycle is not Lifecycle Marketing

We aren’t trying to say the marketing lifecycle isn’t important. But rather, it is just part of the full picture. As is, the marketing lifecycle focuses on ‘me’ (the brand) and the company’s wants. The best marketers pair that with the customer lifecycle (‘them’) and loyalty (‘us’). By looking at all three, you gain context into customer behavior and how they are engaging with your brand. It is only with those data points you can truly understand a customer’s wants and needs.

If you’re like most companies, all this data lives separate and siloed across the organization. This predicament makes it challenging to get a unified view of all three lifecycles. Having a centralized data hub is the best way to understand what customers want. Only once you figure out what a customer wants, you can start thinking about when they want it.

2. Quality over Quantity

It’s strange to think that a phrase that dates back to ancient Rome is a relatively new concept to marketers. Still, the notion of quality over quantity content is still catching on. The old way of sending out mass emails and hoping someone would bite is obsolete. Consumers are now used to getting a more personalized experience. If you don’t follow suit, users might not open emails or, worse yet, they may mark them as spam.  

As Annie went on to say, when Vivino first started, email quantity was their exact problem. Vivino was sending daily messages to their entire database about upcoming sales. With the assistance of a customer data platform, Vivino can see all its customer data in one place. Simon Data sits on top of their data warehouse and uses Vivino’s recommendation engine to create daily deals personalized by their database. Simon Data enables Vivino to send emails that directly correlate to their customers’ personal preferences. Since changing its model, Vivino has seen a monthly email ROI increase of 220%.

Judging by this increase, it’s not just when you talk to your customers but how you talk to them that matters.

3. Tailoring – Not Personalization

Personalization is one of the hottest trends in marketing. From personalized messaging in emails to customer experience, brands are trying to figure out how to make customers feel a campaign is uniquely them. The real solution to this is tailoring, not personalization. When you start an email off with the reader’s name, you are personalizing it. However, when you add more personalized elements, you begin to tailor that message. In fact, emails with three or more personalized pieces see 2x greater CTR and 6x boosted conversion. Are you doing enough to make your campaigns truly your customer?

Genuinely connecting with your customer is about understanding their wants and needs. Understanding your customer is essential, from things as simple as how often they want to hear from you to more complex things like their behavior. Lifecycle marketing aims to give customers the best experience for the entirety of your relationship.

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