How a CDP Connects the Dots Between Customer Data and Marketing Campaign Orchestration

Data has become the most valuable asset of any business, and customer data is the most useful data of all. Accurate and comprehensive customer data is critical to the entire marketing process. It can help a brand differentiate itself from the competition. The key is knowing which customers, which products, what messaging, and what time to approach your marketing to be the most effective. And, the five secret powers of a CDP will help you hit these targets.

1. The Right Target

It’s no secret that marketing teams need to know as much about their customers and potential customers as possible. From simple questions like- who are they and where are they. To more complex ones like- what sorts of products and services do they like, how do they make their purchases, or why are they seeking a particular product or service.  Marketers want to find repeat and loyal customers. They also want to learn what learn marketing campaigns resonate with them. There’s so much focus on whom to target and why often we overlook a large piece of what your data tells you.

Customer data is also informing marketing teams about who is not to approach. Learning to listen to this piece reduces waste, inefficiency, and surplus marketing spend.  

2. The Right Message

The most effective marketing campaigns are always accurately targeted.  However, that level of personalization requires deep knowledge of customers and their preferences.

Just knowing that someone drives a particular car or lives in a specific area isn’t enough. Customers need to feel as if they have been reached and understood. Yet, that understanding requires messaging that resonates with each customer- as if tailored just for them. This connection is critical to ensuring a seamless customer experience and fostering a long relationship.

3. The Right Time

Even in marketing, timing is everything. Suppose the timing of a message is off. In that case, that message—no matter how accurately crafted—will miss the mark.

Businesses need to truly understand what their customer data is telling them about previous purchases. When they do, marketing teams can accurately identify when a customer is ready to connect—and most likely to respond positively to their marketing message.

4. The Right Place

The retail environment has become complex and multi-channeled. Some customers still prefer physical stores, while others like to elicit information by talking to a representative on the phone. Still, others prefer to shop online, and of those, some prefer their phone to their computer. A few will do a mix of those things, or perhaps all of them. And even newer avenues of engagement are emerging.

This complexity means that marketing teams have to deliver the right message at the right time and the right place, and through the right channel. Again, data should inform marketers how to interact with customers. In other words, m arketing communication must serve its purpose but also suit the customer’s preference.

5. The Right Impact

When customer data is properly collected and analyzed, it can have a tremendous impact. It should inform the right message, target, time, and channel. Marketing teams can ensure their messaging and campaigns have the desired outcome with a comprehensive, accurate, and current view of customer activity. Then they can better target marketing campaigns to ensure continued successful results.

Marketing done right is getting the right message to the right customer at the right time and right place.  Also, demonstrating that message is working. Customer data drives all these factors. Using the right tool (a  customer data platform) to ingest all that data from diverse sources, process that data, and use it to develop meaningful messaging is the key to that marketing magic.

For more questions on what a CDP is and what it can do for you, check out our CDP Buyer’s Guide.

‍

How a CDP Connects the Dots Between Customer Data and Marketing Campaign Orchestration

Data has become the most valuable asset of any business, and customer data is the most useful data of all. Accurate and comprehensive customer data is critical to the entire marketing process. It can help a brand differentiate itself from the competition. The key is knowing which customers, which products, what messaging, and what time to approach your marketing to be the most effective. And, the five secret powers of a CDP will help you hit these targets.

1. The Right Target

It's no secret that marketing teams need to know as much about their customers and potential customers as possible. From simple questions like- who are they and where are they. To more complex ones like- what sorts of products and services do they like, how do they make their purchases, or why are they seeking a particular product or service. Marketers want to find repeat and loyal customers. They also want to learn what learn marketing campaigns resonate with them. There's so much focus on whom to target and why often we overlook a large piece of what your data tells you. Customer data is also informing marketing teams about who is not to approach. Learning to listen to this piece reduces waste, inefficiency, and surplus marketing spend.

2. The Right Message

The most effective marketing campaigns are always accurately targeted. However, that level of personalization requires deep knowledge of customers and their preferences. Just knowing that someone drives a particular car or lives in a specific area isn't enough. Customers need to feel as if they have been reached and understood. Yet, that understanding requires messaging that resonates with each customer- as if tailored just for them. This connection is critical to ensuring a seamless customer experience and fostering a long relationship.

3. The Right Time

Even in marketing, timing is everything. Suppose the timing of a message is off. In that case, that message—no matter how accurately crafted—will miss the mark.Businesses need to truly understand what their customer data is telling them about previous purchases. When they do, marketing teams can accurately identify when a customer is ready to connect—and most likely to respond positively to their marketing message.

4. The Right Place

The retail environment has become complex and multi-channeled. Some customers still prefer physical stores, while others like to elicit information by talking to a representative on the phone. Still, others prefer to shop online, and of those, some prefer their phone to their computer. A few will do a mix of those things, or perhaps all of them. And even newer avenues of engagement are emerging.This complexity means that marketing teams have to deliver the right message at the right time and the right place, and through the right channel. Again, data should inform marketers how to interact with customers. In other words, m arketing communication must serve its purpose but also suit the customer's preference.

5. The Right Impact

When customer data is properly collected and analyzed, it can have a tremendous impact. It should inform the right message, target, time, and channel. Marketing teams can ensure their messaging and campaigns have the desired outcome with a comprehensive, accurate, and current view of customer activity. Then they can better target marketing campaigns to ensure continued successful results.Marketing done right is getting the right message to the right customer at the right time and right place. Also, demonstrating that message is working. Customer data drives all these factors. Using the right tool (a customer data platform) to ingest all that data from diverse sources, process that data, and use it to develop meaningful messaging is the key to that marketing magic.For more questions on what a CDP is and what it can do for you, check out our CDP Buyer's Guide.

In the latest installment of the “Data Unlocked” series of podcasts, Simon Data co-founder and CEO Jason Davis chats with customer experience advisor Adrian Swinscoe about “The Messy Middle” of data. After, they go on to discuss how cleaning up your data issues is the only way to get the most out of your customer data.  

“The idea of the messy middle came from a conversation I had with Michael Ramsey of ServiceNow. We realized the messy middle is not something exclusive to customer service. We tend to look at things from the exterior but don’t necessarily think deeply about how we do things. So that research doesn’t surprise me.”

-Adrian Swinscoe

Davis led off the conversation with the highlights of a recent survey conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Simon Data that polled 465 marketing professionals. The study showed that 90% of marketers say they have adequate capabilities to drive marketing outcomes. Yet, those same respondents said they had real challenges hitting these objectives. So, what does that disparity mean?

Both Swinscoe and Davis believe it comes down to three key issues around data. These issues center around data unification, data application, and data paralysis.

1. Data Unification

Davis and Swinscoe look at the disconnect between organizations’ design, operations, and customer data usage. “I approach things in how they’re connected and how they work together,” says Swinscoe. “The problem is that’s not necessarily how we’ve grown and developed organizations. We’ve developed organizations along functional lines.”

Now that modern business operates more customer-focused and data-driven, companies are pushing those initiatives into the existing process-driven framework. However, the results don’t always add up. “You’re not organizing yourself on a purely supply-and-demand basis. You’re not organizing yourself to respond to demand as it presents itself,” he says. “And what we end up doing is the square peg and round hole thing, and we’ve been doing that for decades.

2. Data Application

Davis says he has witnessed a significant divide between data operations and data analytics, especially when it comes to customer marketing. “Great marketing starts with the customer. You have to be in a place where you understand the customer,” he says. “Our core thesis is moving data functions into business functions. Technology is a part of this, but it starts with wanting to have an analytically oriented marketing team, and that starts with organizational design.”

However, the lingering skills gap also drives that divide, says Swinscoe. “There’s a lack of capability in organizations around data science and data analytics and, more importantly, around data-driven decision making at a leadership level,” he says. “We can and need to give people access to tools to generate their hypotheses and better understand what their customers are doing.”

3. Data Paralysis

Another trend Davis noted is that many companies focus on first-party data, which can lead to near-paralysis when making decisions.

Swinscoe quoted philosopher and engineer Alfred Korzybski, who once said, ” The map is not the territory.” He explained how people rely on data and believe it represents an accurate picture of all facets of their customers. This reliance on that singular focus prevents them from realizing what is happening with their customers.

“Two different customers can do the same thing but be very different individuals,” he says. “Only when you understand that can you put into place the right strategies and tactics to deliver the experiences that will lead to the best outcomes for your business.”

Davis agreed with that view. “Data isn’t reality,” he said. “Data describes reality. You need to be thinking about the customer and the experience. There are some things you can measure and some things you can never measure.”

Then, he described the need to reflect on the emotions and experiences of the customers and consider the data as a point of triangulation into that complete view. While it is essential to have the right data, it’s even more critical to fully understand where the customer is and when they have a great experience. “Personalization needs to start with the person,” he said.

Gain Momentum with Customer Data

Customer data can certainly drive those efforts, especially when used effectively. “Leveraging data in modern organizations provides a mechanism for learning and working toward common goals,” said Davis.

“I truly believe there are only two physical states,” said Swinscoe. “Those are inertia and momentum. And our role is about, ‘How do we create momentum?’ We don’t need to be going one hundred miles an hour. We could be only going two mph. But it’s important to move. Success begets success.”

When it comes to closing that gap in the messy middle and closing the gaps between people, processes, and systems, Davis and Swinscoe agree. Therefore, it is more effective to start small, get it done right, and then scale up from there. “When that works from top-down,” says Swinscoe, “you can build a tremendous amount of momentum.”

Putting customer data to work can help marketing teams achieve that level of momentum. Comprehensive and accurate customer data profiles to solidify and unify modern marketing efforts can help make that “messy middle” a bit less messy.

Listen to the entire  Data Unlocked Podcast on Spotify to hear the rest of Davis and Swinscoe’s discussion about the messy middle of data. Also, hear more on how companies can best work to close organizational gaps. And follow the podcast on LinkedIn to get the latest news and behind-the-scenes tips from business leaders.

‍

The push for deeper personalization to improve customer experience is a top priority these days. However, highly targeted and deeply personalized marketing efforts rely on comprehensive customer data profiles. These help marketing teams customize and conduct effective campaigns. And, these profiles are fueled by data stored on a customer data platform (CDP). A CDP brings data together in one spot. From there, it makes it immediately available for customer profiles segmentation and personalization. Additionally, it helps marketers deliver personalized messaging to the right customers at the right time through the right channels.The value of using a CDP becomes quite evident in this Forrester Consulting Total Economic Impact study. The study examines how five companies used Simon Data’s CDP to improve their customer experience. They did this by giving marketers the data they need to run their campaigns. These interviews reveal how these companies use Simon’s CDP to achieve:

• Improved segmentation, personalization, and targeting
• Increased productivity and collaboration between teams
• Streamlined cross-channel experimentation and execution

A Closer Look at Personalized Marketing

Before starting with Simon’s CDP, these companies were dealing with data from multiple sources. As a result, they weren’t getting the most value out of that data. Therefore, many struggled to apply customer data to marketing campaigns. When marketers did try to work with customer data, they found manual segmentation was slow and imperfect.After gathering their customer data with Simon’s CDP, the marketers at these five companies created personalized customer messaging across multiple channels. They found more personalized messages improved campaign performance and increased revenue. It also helped streamline marketing processes. Using the Simon CDP’s automation, marketing teams also reduced the effort required to execute their campaigns by 50% to 70%.

Positive Results, Increased Profits

The Forrester research also revealed the interviewed companies realized significant profits from personalized email marketing. After improving the personalization of their email campaigns, the five companies collectively brought in combined incremental earnings of $4.8 million. The advanced segmentation power of the Simon CDP helped marketers personalize email messaging and delivery cadence to better connect with customers. This outcome supports the goal of delivering the right message to the right customer at the right time. The businesses interviewed by Forrester saw positive results across a variety of metrics, including:

• Better open rates (by 20%)
• Higher click-through rates (CTRs)
• Improved conversion rates
• Increased revenue generated by campaigns

Simon’s CDP helped these companies improve personalized email and targeting. Also, they increased digital return on advertising spend by 15%. Before using the CDP, digital ad spending was far less efficient. They found that the CDP’s improved segmentation and targeting helped them make better advertising investments. This improvement helped generate an additional $1.7 million over three years.Several of the companies interviewed for the Forrester report were able to apply the CDP’s profile segmentation on their corporate websites. This implementation ensures personalization and consistency across every customer contact point. These engagement efforts led to an increase in revenue of $159,000.Using the Simon CDP to automate personalized marketing campaigns also led to more efficient business workflows. Productivity increases for the marketing teams and their support engineers translated to a savings of $563,000 over three years. The engineering teams reported they could reduce their time developing personalized email marketing campaigns by 70%.

Improved Marketing Processes

The softer, unquantified benefits are equally impressive. The CDP’s experimental framework greatly simplified the process of developing cross-channel test campaigns for marketing teams. Additionally, these tests typically didn’t even require engineering support. Simon’s CDP provides a single source of truth of customer data. These profiles enhance cross-team collaboration between all teams, including marketing, product development, data analysis, and CRM operations. Additionally, this interdepartmental collaboration also helps facilitate developing new customer experiences.Customer data comes in from a variety of sources and formats. However, the Simon CDP can quickly ingest and unify data for flexible analysis. This unification also opens additional use cases for customer profile data. There were significant benefits, according to the businesses interviewed for this report. Previously, they were using solutions that required extensive engineering to ingest and orchestrate data successfully.The companies’ response was overwhelmingly positive. “We never feel like there’s a limitation to what we can achieve,” said one retail manager interviewed for the study. The combined experiences of the companies Forrester surveyed show how a CDP can help inform marketing campaigns by more accurate data profiles.Download this Forrester Consulting Total Economic Impact Study to read how access to customer data can drive effective personalized campaigns.

At Simon, we’re excited to announce for a consecutive time we ranked “leader” in G2 Summer 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, and Best Support Mid-Market. We have also gained the Mid-Market Leader award.

G2 Summer Ranking Badges

“We couldn’t be happier to see our focus on helping brands navigate through the chaos of data and supporting our clients as they look to increase their engagement with its customers in the latest G2 report. G2’s quarterly analysis is incredibly important because they are based on user-generated reviews and show how important it is for brands such as Simon Data to focus on the outcomes our customers expect. I am proud of the technical and support work that our team has shown over the past year and this work is celebrated here with these acknowledgments.”-Jason Davis, CEO, and co-founder of Simon Data

G2 rankings are based on how verified users evaluate customer satisfaction. Now, let’s look at the top three things our customers love most about Simon Data.

User-Friendly Interface

Simon Data built its interface with non-technical users in mind. The drag and drop segment builder makes it easy for marketers to create target audiences. This task is done without relying on the data/engineer team’s assistance.

“I am happy to be using Simon Data as I feel it is a much more user-friendly means of pulling this data as opposed to our old process in which we pulled these lists from a database using SQL.”

-Cade C, Mid-Market Company

"The UI of Simon data is intuitive to understand. It makes some of the more technical aspects of data manipulation more approachable for the everyday marketer that doesn't know SQL."

-Phil H, Mid-Market Company

Amazing Customer Service

Another key thing that makes Simon Data stand out is our client success team. Our team members are friendly, quick to respond, and engaged in your day-to-day problems. At Simon, we buy into your company goals and are invested in seeing you achieve them. But don’t just take my word for it.

“The people we work with help us at a moment's notice, are friendly and extremely knowledgeable about their product and how we could most effectively utilize the platform.”

-User in Apparel& Fashion, Mid-Market Company

"We evaluated a number of providers in the space, and couldn't be happier with the engagement of the Simon team after the sale, from integration to onboarding to ongoing strategic planning."

-Admin in Consumer Goods, Small Business

Ability to Work Independently

While I already alluded to this, marketers love the independence they gain with Simon Data. However, it’s not just the ability but the confidence they gain through the platform. Allowing marketing to create segments on their own also allows data to focus on analytics.

“Simon has allowed us to run all of our email segmentation through them rather than relying on a data team to pull information as needed. This has also allowed our data team to focus more on analytics rather than data pulls."- Zach W, Mid-Market Company

"The major problem we are solving is being able to create actionable data fields out of our raw customer data with minimal support from our data science team."

-User in Hospitality, Mid-Market Company

These are just some reasons our users are raving about Simon Data in our G2 summer rankings. See all our G2 reviews here.

In the Marketing Leader’s Guide to Selecting The Right CDP Webinar, Jason Davis, Simon Data’s co-founder and CEO, speaks with Seth Solomons, Eastlake Advisory Group’s CEO (and former CMO of Equinox), about the complexity of finding the right CDP for your business.

The martech space is exceptionally complicated, with various platforms that should, but don’t always, work seamlessly together. That is one of the things a CDP can do- make your tech stack work better together. However, the CDP space is vast and offers a variety of solutions. Once you’ve established you need a CDP, how do you go about finding which one best fits your organization’s goals?

Step One- Problem Assessment

What is your goal for a CDP?

If you’re like most companies, you have lots of data. You might even have too much data. This information overload makes it difficult to know what is valuable and which data points garner insights. As is, your data points aren’t properly driving your strategy. If that’s the case, it’s not necessarily your fault.

Data is…

• Hard to use to drive marketing outcomes
• Tricky to identify customer personas
• Difficult to operationalize to make sure your marketing is optimized

What problems can a CDP fix?

In short, there’s room for growth being left on the table by underutilizing your data. A CDP should make you smarter through smarter insights, operations, and outcomes.  

Smarter insights understand how you can better use your data to know your customer. Gaining these insights lets you see potential opportunities to improve their experience. Next, Smarter operations remove existing friction around accessing your data. Instead of waiting for manually created segments, a CDP will automate that process for you. Last, smarter outcomes stem from using strategic insights to operationalize your data. The result is better campaigns, higher customer engagement, and ultimately higher revenue.

Here’s what Solomon’s assessment looked like– Equinox had a tremendous amount of data. However, it lacked organization in a way that could deliver a better customer experience. At that time, they didn’t customize communications. The goal was to understand the club user and speak to them like humans, not customers. To achieve this goal, Equinox needed a basic ability to leverage existing data. They were looking for a way to clean and organize this data so they could use it effectively.

At this point, they were using mass communications. The goal was to personalize messaging and build strategies against journeys that mattered to the highest lifetime value members. However, another struggle was the difference between the physical and digital experience. Equinox is a luxury club but felt less so on the app. Without personalization in communications, it was impossible to achieve a cohesive customer experience.

‍

Step Two- CDP Selection

How to choose the right CDP

One of the most critical parts of choosing a CDP is making sure there is alignment and understanding. Does this CDP connect with your current tech stack? As previously mentioned, the goal of a CDP is to make all components of your stack work better together. To achieve this goal, it needs to integrate with all parts: email, social, warehouse, web, mobile, etc. You can gain this information through an RFP process. However, an RFP is about much more than integration. It is about understanding if you’re finding the right partner for you.  

Make sure that during the CDP selection process, you’re asking the right questions. Does this CDP understand your business model and goals? More importantly, do they understand which data is vital in achieving these goals?

According to Solomons, the reason Equinox ended up choosing Simon is not something that anyone should overlook. What is the service model of the CDP? Are the team members motivated to help you solve your problems? In short, the white-glove service Simon Data offers ultimately pushed the RFP process in its favor.

Step 3- Ready to Deploy!  

How do you minimize risk and measure outcomes?

The best use of data is to make your organization customer-centric. How can we use data to change people’s lives? Solomon’s answer- by switching to always ready model. Always on is too passive. It waits for customers to come to you. However, being always ready is being ready to serve and support them at all times. While this model is optimal, you need the right data and tech to make this process scalable.

The best way to minimize risks is by understanding customers better to give them what they want when they want it. How did your customers spend money? What did they interact with? More importantly, how can we use our knowledge to add value to their experiences.

Some examples of how Equinox achieved this was by switching from one size fits all to a more personalized experience. Rather than send weekly email sends, they started sending event-based sends. With internal databases communicating, Equinox’s marketing was orchestrated across all their channels, giving the user a unified experience.

The best way to measure outcomes is by aligning KPIs to the goals you are trying to achieve. Say you are trying to grow your user base, measure against app downloads. Or, if you want to increase your engagement, measure against open rates or unsubscriptions. It’s essential to choose the right metric for your company goals. However, it is also critical to make sure your KPIs don’t just focus on the bottom of the funnel but rather a full-funnel experience.

Key Takeaways

• Be realistic when identifying your problems
• Create a plan that suits your organization’s needs
• Start small, but  with the intent to scale

Chances are your organization isn’t perfect. The good news these problems can be solved by finding the right partner. Recognizing the importance of finding the right CDP and asking hard questions during the RFP process is key to achieving your company goals. For questions on the RFP process or how to chose the right CDP, check out our CDP Buyers Guide!

In the newest installment of the Data Unlocked Podcast, Jason Davis, Simon Data’s co-founder and CEO, links up with Colin Zima, Chief Analytics Officer and VP of Strategy at Looker. They discuss what it truly means to be data-driven. Through that lens, they also look at how analytics can empower non-technical roles to make data-driven decisions. As a data scientist, Zima has a career’s worth of insights into when to use your data and what it represents. Let’s look at his thoughts on how to be a data-first organization.

What Data-Driven Actually Means

The Misconception

A 2020 Mckinsey survey found that only 10% of companies can measure their data science efforts against measurable KPIs. On top of that, only 30% of enterprise CEOs think their analytical strategy aligns with their operational capabilities from a data perspective. So what’s the problem?

The challenge here is a misconception of what data-driven means. When people imagine a “data-driven company,” they think of AI and automation based on an influx of data from online behavior. To keep up, you need next-level data intelligence and machine learning. However, that’s a far cry from what’s really going on.

Zima explains data-drivenness is not ‘passive intelligence running your business for you.’ Instead, companies that have a more incremental approach to data are the ones he respects the most. Take time to record something that will make a difference for your company or your customers. Next, analyze that data and make an informed decision. Starting small but scaleable is the best approach to being a data-driven company.

“The most important thing is just getting the data you need, then getting it in people’s hands so they can make slightly better decisions.”

Colin Zima, Chief Analytics Officer and VP of Strategy at Looker

Easy Solution

An easy way to incorporate an incremental approach to data is by looking at which channels outperform the others. Then, make changes based on simple data that non-technical roles can understand and execute. Those two metrics are critical but often ignored. Your organization doesn’t need a machine to tell you which customers are going to turn. It needs accessible data that is easily understood. “The basics aren’t being focused on enough because people are waiting for these big transformational use cases,” Zima said.

Moreover, Zima stresses the weight that management style has on data-drivenness. For example, suppose an organization has a dictatorial view on decision-making. In that case, very few people see and therefore understand the data used to make the decision. The question becomes: are you making people more data-driven or the organization more data-driven?

Why You Need to Data Empower “Non-Technical” Roles

Speaking of abnormal data usage, Zima mentioned plenty of applications outside of the marketing world. Specifically, he’s a big fan of data-enabling customer success and support teams. Many people in customer success don’t think of themselves in a technical role. However, that doesn’t mean they can’t benefit from seeing statistics about customers.  Data-enabling these teams can give them “superpowers” and empower them to do much more.

“I think (data-enabling customer success teams) is almost the perfect example of these areas that have wanted magic.  ‘I want to be able to read my support tickets and analyze and understand them.’ The real problem seems to be about data integration: pulling data from multiple sources, understanding what the customer is trying to do, taking all of this information, and contextualizing it into solving a problem.”

Colin Zima

Data enabling your entire organization also ensures that the right people are coming in contact with the data they need to solve problems. Currently, the teams that best understand the problem are too disconnected from the data needed to solve it. The great thing about consulting your employees first is that, while data science can solve complex problems in a vacuum, people can consider variable situations. That way, you understand which issues need data science vs. analytics, when to buy analytics software, and when to hand it over to domain experts.

Tools for the Job

Colin Zima calls Looker the Google of data analytics. Just like Google, Looker is a generalized tool. It is great for analyzing large quantities of data and offering a broad overview. While Looker tries to be both wide and deep, at the end of the day, it’s hard to do both really well. Looker is a broad tool and it works great for analyzing depth of data, but it wasn’t made for specific searches. For a wide view, you want Looker, but for a marketing-specific problem, you want a tool that does that well.

Zima goes on to say a company needs both sets of tools to be successful. The key is to have a broad tool with a specialized tool sitting on top for those more specific use cases. That’s what Simon Data does. It sits on top of existing databases and performs more specific marketing functions. Simon design works with your existing tech stack. The two work together seamlessly to offer top-notch data analytics.

 Listen to the full Data Unlocked Podcast on Spotify to hear the rest of Colin and Jason’s discussion about data analysis and what being data-driven truly means. Follow the podcast on Linkedin to get the latest news and behind-the-scenes tips from business leaders.

‍

From experimentation to optimization: how a customer data platform can enhance your cross-channel marketing

On some level, all marketing is experimentation. Even the most proven strategies may not work with your target audience for one reason or another. While the statistics and trends show some reasonable things to expect, much of marketing initially begins as one big experiment composed of many small experiments. Without proper communication between the different experiments, the entire plan can end badly. Let’s take a look at the importance of cross-channel marketing and communication and the one tool that can revolutionize this process.

What happens when you experiment without a customer data platform?

No marketing effort, from the smallest wording change in an email to a wide-scale campaign spanning months, exists in a vacuum. Marketing channels solve some of these problems by segmenting out your efforts. However, they cannot be the only answer as this enables inherent silos. Imagine you have a significant promotional event coming up, and you need to determine the right mix of email and SMS to drive the most interest. Without a single platform allowing for cross-channel experimentation, how would you do this? You would have to manage holdout groups and control for execution (i.e., timing, messaging, targeting). You would need to ensure there’s no unintended overlap between test groups. You would need consistency across segments and the ability to export those segments into end-channels, deploy, then gather and interpret results.This requires an incredible amount of work and time. Enter customer data platform solutions.

Say goodbye to silos with CDP-powered cross-channel marketing

So, what is a CDP in marketing, and what does a customer data platform do? With a CDP for marketing that allows for cross-channel experimentation, you can manage end-channel execution from a single platform and location instead of from multiple software platforms that may or may not interface well together. For example, let’s say you build out the appropriate segment parameters within a customer data platform. Statistically significant groups are partitioned off into email-only, SMS-only, email & SMS, and holdout, with results and reporting rolling into a single location.In addition, the insights gathered from the tests feed into your customer profiles. If test results show someone from an SMS-only group didn’t convert, but his profile shows numerous email conversion events, this has a significant impact on how you will choose to communicate with them as you move forward.However, one important thing to note is that not all customer data platform software enables cross channel marketing. How can you ensure that you make the right choice?

Finding the right CDP

CDPs are both fairly new technology solutions and are vast, complicated pieces of software. In order to cut down the confusion and guide you through the process, we have created a comprehensive CDP Buyer’s Guide. We walk you through every part of customer data platform tools, how they interact with other martech solutions, and much, much more. Learn more about personalized marketing and customer data platform use cases:○ Why audience segmentation needs a customer data platform○ Optimize your personalized marketing with a CDP○ Get a 360 degree customer view with a CDPA complete, unified view of your customer is one click away - request a free demo and see how Simon transforms and maximizes your data for a seamless customer experience.

In the newest installment of the Data Unlocked Podcast, Jason Davis, Simon Data’s co-founder and CEO, speaks with Heini Zachariassan, founder and CEO of Vivino. They discuss how Vivino took a group of casual wine lovers and built a wine community. Through this recording, we discover the keys to Vivino’s success are its ability to identify a gap in the market, automate workflow bottlenecks, and use personalization to strengthen relationships with community members.

Identify White Space in the Market

In 2010, Vivino started with a unique idea- what if wine drinkers could scan a bottle on their phone and instantly see how others rated it? At the time, nothing like it existed on the market. However, as their popularity grew, so did their competition. As copycat services emerged, Vivino needed to stay ahead of the curve.

Their first innovation was something Vivino had in mind since inception. After spending seven years collecting data and improving their recommendation system, they launched Vivino Market. This new feature uses data orchestration to put their growing database to work. Ultimately, users receive purchase recommendations based on wines they’ve highly rated. Therefore, customers can buy tailored wines directly from the app.

“We had to grow our community first in order to leverage the power of our data to bring an infinite number of wine merchants under one digital roof to sell wines we are highly confident users will love. With the launch of Vivino Market, you are witnessing the beginning of a new way to browse, select, and purchase wine”

Heini Zachariassan, CEO of Vivino

Identifying gaps in the market isn’t just about creating a unique product. It is also about out-pacing your competitors as you grow. More importantly, it’s always keeping the customer in mind and enhancing their everyday experiences.

When You Can- Automate

As their database grew, Vivino saw another opportunity to give their users a better experience through segmentation. However, when Vivino set out to create audience segments, they discovered their manual process was long and tedious. First, they had to combine data from various sources to make recommendations to customers. After that, they manually created emails to deployed.

In order to scale, they knew they had to simplify the process. Vivino employed a Customer Data Platform to do the heavy lifting. A CDP allows users to unify data from anywhere and orchestrate customer journeys. With Simon Data’s CDP, Vivino was able to automate segment creation for email marketing campaigns.

“Simon now powers Vivino’s complex ‘Daily Deals’ emails by automatically bringing in Vivino’s internal wine recommendation engine selections for each user from Vivino’s Redshift and joining their highest-matching wine to each user. The tool also suppresses any wines that users have received previously, so decisions on how to match users with wines are made in an automated fashion.”

Vivino x Simon Data | Case Study

The underlying benefit of using a CDP is Vivino’s engineering and marketing teams gaining bandwidth to focus on high-level strategy and execution. This efficiency speeds up the workflow and helps launch campaigns more quickly.

Personalization = Right Time, Right Message

Segmentation and personalization often get used interchangeably in the marketing world, but there is a difference. Personalization is taking segmentation a step further and knowing each customer on an individual level. In this case, Vivino sends just enough personalized recommendations to clear inventory without over-stimulating demand.

By nature, their model is promotion-heavy and necessitates a high send frequency. Still, not all customers have the same appetite for Vivino’s deals. Vivino optimizes its marketing cadence and segmentation with Simon Data’s CDP to clear inventory while avoiding message fatigue. Simon enables Vivino to tailor weekly emails to include recommendations (based on viewing and purchase history) relevant to each individual. In most cases, a Customer Data Platform is the only way to achieve such a high level of personalization.

Summary

In the podcast, Heini makes his appreciation and respect for Vivino’s customers known. “We have this immense recommendation system because people love being a part of the community.” Keeping that in mind, he also stresses that any customer messaging needs to be timely, engaging, and relevant. To put it in Heini’s words- “don’t bother me if you don’t have anything relevant- just leave me alone.”

If you don’t have something that offers value, don’t lessen your product by sending seemingly random messages. We’re all bombarded with marketing daily. Therefore, the question becomes how do you break through the noise. Knowing your audience and effectively segmenting messages is a good start to standing out.

 You can join Vivino’s community here to start discovering wine that fits your tastes – and your budget.

 If you’re interested in hearing more behind-the-scenes tips from business leaders, follow the Data Unlocked Podcast on Spotify.

Customer segmentation: how a customer data platform enables the 360 degree customer view

The world of marketing - especially personalized marketing - can be an incredibly mysterious place, even for seasoned veterans of the craft. Why did this text message campaign work while the second one bombed? What changed in the wider view of the company’s marketing strategy when the website was refreshed and updated? Why is all of our data scattered over multiple channels, documents, and programs? What is a 360 view of a customer, and will we ever achieve it?Aligning customer data and end-channel orchestration in a single place gives you something incredibly valuable, something akin to a unified customer view: you get a 360 degree customer view of your marketing efforts. What is customer 360 view? It’s a centralized collection of all of your customers’ data, from basic age and gender information to purchase history and ad interactions.How is this possible, especially in the snarl of marketing that so many companies struggle with today? The answer is by using customer data platform software. But what does a customer data platform do, and what is a CDP in marketing? When properly used by companies, customer data platform capabilities include allowing marketers to independently use data for modeling, segmentation, targeting, testing, and other marketing functions. Customer data platform features allow all customer data to be stored, organized, and labeled in one central location as opposed to multiple locations that may or may not sync with one another. A CDP for marketing sets the stage for achieving a 360 view of customer data. Let’s take a closer look at how this is done and the benefits of a 360 customer view.

Know your customers like never before with a customer data platform

In the world before the customer data platform, massive marketing teams had minimal overlap in the platforms where they spent most of their time. The sole exception in the best of cases might be your project management platform. A 360 degree customer view was nothing but a pipe dream. Instead, visibility into ongoing campaigns and projects was limited to weekly stand ups or brief meetings when people could make them happen. In most cases, it was opaque. When companies utilize a customer data platform — especially one that integrates orchestration into its capabilities — endless tabs and logins and porting of data or creative assets become irrelevant. Your marketing stack can become a marketing ecosystem where visibility and collaboration between disparate marketing functions are straightforward.By their very nature, marketing tools silo team members from each other’s workflows. A customer data platform breaks down silos and creates a 360 degree customer view unmatched by other marketing tools today. This is just one example of the power of customer data platform tools. Read on to learn more about customer data platform capabilities and CDP use cases:○ Why audience segmentation needs a customer data platform○ Optimize your personalized marketing with a CDP

More secrets to CDP marketing

Centralizing your data comes with many other perks. These touch on every aspect of modern marketing, from finding your target audience to keeping customers for multiple years. Creating a 360 degree customer view is only one part of these immense structures. Learn how a CDP unifies your data for real-time insights, intelligent decision making, and personalized customer experiences: view our CDP Buyer’s Guide.We look forward to joining you on the road to solutions!A complete, unified view of your customer is one click away - request a free demo and see how Simon transforms and maximizes your data for a seamless customer experience.

How a customer data platform synchronizes, unifies, and empowers your data for optimal marketing campaign orchestration

Marketing departments and companies face new challenges on a daily basis. Strategies that worked as recently as three months ago can quickly become irrelevant and uninspired, despite all the time, effort and money poured into them. This isn’t ideal, but can seem unavoidable. Some campaigns are simply going to fail, and some personalized marketing attempts are simply going to inaccurately target customers, right? While this statement has some grain of truth, companies do have the resources available to significantly cut down on failed campaigns and stale tactics.Enter campaign orchestration. So, what is campaign orchestration? In short, the marketing orchestration definition is a linear process by which marketers craft, deploy, and measure the success of campaigns throughout all channels in order to build a unified, frictionless customer experience. When this is accomplished, marketing and campaign orchestration is a thing of beauty. When it falters, it makes herding cats look organized by comparison and wastes funding. Let’s take a closer look at marketing campaign orchestration management and how a customer data platform enables companies to successfully create and streamline marketing orchestration throughout their strategies.

Beyond marketing campaign management: optimize your marketing campaign orchestration with a customer data platform

Campaign orchestration starts with organized data. This is where customer data platform software comes into play. But what is a CDP in marketing? What does a customer data platform do?Having a CDP for marketing — especially one that integrates orchestration into its capabilities — means that endless tabs, logins, and porting of data and creative assets between programs are things of the past. Your marketing stack can become a marketing ecosystem where visibility and collaboration between disparate marketing functions are straightforward and simple.However, not every CDP has the ability to orchestrate marketing messages and campaigns. Each software is created with a specific type of user in mind, and therefore has different customer data platform use cases. While using a CDP that doesn’t fit your company’s needs, your team members continue to find themselves bottlenecked by tedium and struggle with getting their carefully constructed, ever-updated cohorts and segments from the centralized data platform to the necessary end channel. In addition, your clients will experience disconnects in their messaging, such as unwanted email and other content triggers that randomly spit out marketing to their customers and leads. Orchestrating from one place, where the unified customer view is updated in real-time, gives the right channel manager the right information at the right time so they can make the best possible choice.That’s the power of a quality CDP paired with campaign orchestration techniques. But it doesn’t stop there. A customer data platform that fits well with your organization offers much more than orchestration capabilities. Customer data platform features include modeling, segmentation, targeting, testing, and many other marketing functions that can help elevate your strategy. If you’re interested in learning more about customer data platforms or finding a CDP that fits your needs, check out our CDP Buyer’s Guide. We walk through every aspect of customer data platforms, which tools they can interface with, and how to choose a CDP that will work best with your existing strategy. Read on to learn more about customer data platform capabilities and CDP use cases.○ Why audience segmentation needs a customer data platform○ Optimize your personalized marketing with a CDPA complete, unified view of your customer is one click away - request a free demo and see how Simon transforms and maximizes your data for a seamless customer experience.Let’s start the journey to better data management together.

Top Marketers' Guide to Approaching Omnichannel, CX and First-Party Data

On June 2, Simon Data hosted our first Beyond the Click event, where we gathered marketers from the world’s most iconic brands for a virtual, fireside chat-style discussion. Joining us was Katya Andresen, Senior Vice President of Card Customer Experience for Capital One, and Seth Solomons, former CMO of Equinox and now CEO of Eastlake Advisory Group. Together, Katya and Seth shared some of their insights and perspectives on marketing leadership and the challenges faced by today’s B2C marketers in building data-driven experiencesClick here to view the event recording, or read on to see our takeaways from their discussion.

Takeaway 1: Why Marketers Need To Go Deeper

A frictionless experience is a basic mandate in today’s world... But In order to drive a differentiated brand experience, marketers need to address the deeper needs, desires and motivations of their customers.There’s a huge difference between a basic, run of the mill marketing experience and one that’s truly customer centric. And the people who are the most aware of this are our customers, of course. A customer-centric experience starts and ends with your customer’s needs. Staying in tune with their needs and motivations on a deeper level can help you craft an effective marketing strategy. At Equinox, for instance, the team is aligned around the vision of empowering self betterment for their customers. Helping people reach their full potential through their membership journey at Equinox became their marketing team’s organizing principle for content and journeys.“The first 30 days of a journey were critical to figuring out the strategy for the customer to stay with us,” said Seth. “The next 90 days reinforced that, and after that, the experience was one in which they could be their best self. The journeys need to be informed by the strategy, and most importantly you need to make things that people love from a content standpoint… That really differentiates you from any other brand and experience standpoint.”In short, you need to really get to know your customers. Put yourself in their shoes to uncover their motivations, needs, and from that, identify creative opportunities in your experience to meet those needs. This isn’t a one-and-done activity, it’s an on-going process in which you work to provide an experience for your customers that deepens their relationship with your brand.

Takeaway 2: Putting "Omnichannel" In Context

Omnichannel is the gold standard, but the way you approach it depends on your business, your goals, values, and your customer’s needs.Capitol One’s version of omnichannel brings their digital-first customer experience strategy into the real world of physical banking. Capital One leads with a unique digital experience that also informs their brick and mortar experience. “We want to bring everything to your fingertips so you can do everything you need to do, in the moment, when you need to do it,” said Katya. “So when you’re out shopping and your card gets declined because of fraud detection, you’re going to want to be able to take care of that right away with a text message. A lot of our delivery with our marketing, our servicing, our different value-added experiences, are digital.” While the company’s goal is to reimagine banking so customers don’t have to go to a physical branch for everything, this effort actually led Capital One to take a different approach to its branch experiences. In 2018, the company announced the launch of Capital One Cafes in some of its key markets. These cafes are a hybrid of a coffee shop and bank branch. The cafes provide customers a place where they can work, gather and --if necessary, but not required-- sit with their banker and talk about their finances. In doing so, the company responded to a major pain point among customers - stuffy, impersonal banking - and responded by cutting back on traditional branches and opening sleek financial cafes. While omnichannel might not look the same for every business, successful “hybridization” of the digital and personal builds the foundation for a streamlined omnichannel experience. Identify your company’s vision for its customer experience, values and goals, and make those clear throughout each channel.When it comes to building your omnichannel strategy, your business might not require a major overhaul to its physical experience as Capital One - you may get more value from connecting other touchpoints or channels. Regardless, your omnichannel strategy should begin with deep analysis of consumer needs, and evaluating every experience or touch point through that lens. From there, you’ll be able to identify the areas where an omnichannel strategy would add value to the overall experience, while keeping in mind the trade off between level of effort and potential impact.

Takeaway 3: Navigating The First Party Future

In the wake of the end of third-party cookies, brands need to to maximize their access to first party data.The end of cookies is a scary prospect. After all, most of us have relied on third-party data for the bulk of our marketing efforts. However, being forced to change to a first-party data system can actually present a huge opportunity for your business - if you’re prepared for it.At Equinox, understanding people and not cookies is the start to a really smart strategy. “At Equinox, we created our own Equinox ID, and that would be what we use to resolve identity for our current and prospective members when we saw them in different environments,” said Seth. “We weren't so reliant on any single cookie, but on the resolution of the personal ID wherever they were so that we could understand who they were, how and where they engaged with us, and what stage of the journey they were in.”Not all industries are created equal when it comes to identity. Equinox was almost a fully closed loop, so they had it easier compared to many brands . But if you take Equinox’s approach and start with people and identify those people based on what you know, you’ll already be ahead of the game when the cookie crumbles. Katya also resonated with this, saying “our own first party data is the most important data we have, and the most important differentiator we have. It sounds really obvious, but how many of us feel great about how accessible our first party data is, and how we're putting all the things we know in one place so we know how to act upon it?”The takeaway here is that while the death of cookies may be imminent, a first party data strategy offers much more long term value to brands.To hear more detailed insights from Katya and Seth on how to elevate your B2C marketing, access the full recording of Beyond the Click.