As part of the 2021 Customer Experience Imperatives webinar series, the first webinar on Data Transformation is at the heart of the process.
Data transformation is the privacy-safe acquisition, management, analysis, and activation of valuable data that informs customer experiences in real-time. As an increasing number of companies pursue direct-to-customer efforts, capturing the right data has become more important than ever.
“It’s really getting under the hood of the data asset that the organisation has…how do we mine it and derive meaning from it, and what are the processes and the platforms that we need to do that? That’s at the heart of every customer experience transformation,” explained Blair Cooke, Managing Director of Merkle Australia.
The death of the third-party cookie
There have been significant changes in the way data is collected in the martech space. This is primarily due to new privacy regulations that have come into place and third-party audience tracking and targeting being phased out.
However, despite this, businesses have already started to adapt to the new landscape and realising that even without third-party cookies, meaningful data can still be collected and processed.
“Don’t freak out about the death of third-party cookies because it’s going to affect everyone,” said Jon Goh, Automation and Audience Lead at Medibank.
In some respects, experts see the death of the third-party cookie as an opportunity to develop a more meaningful understanding of their customers with a new focus on first- and second-party data. This data is collected through more productive and direct interactions with customers and the prioritisation of strategic partnerships. Private identity graphs give the company a more personalised concept of a customer and how they wish to experience a brand.
Successful companies who have already started to do this include Netflix, Amazon, and ATT/Warner Media.
The Cloud
So, what technologies are you going to use, and how will you use them? Both parts of this question have to work together to achieve data transformation.
To ensure the correct data platform is aligned with the business outcome, data scientists are usually employed.
Data scientists are increasingly using the public cloud to collect and transform data. Some of the significant benefits to the cloud include:
- Its large storage capabilities
- Their flexibility to start small and grow the cloud footprint as the business grows
- It also comes with managed big data/AI/ML services
- Finally, it’s budget-friendly as companies only pay for what they use.
Customer data platforms or CDPs
Experts in the martech world are excited about Customer data platforms (or CDPs), which provide access to a unified customer profile for marketing, sales, commerce and service.
In fact, in a poll undertaken in the Merkle webinar on data transformation, most respondents said their companies were preparing to undergo a CDP vendor assessment or are currently undergoing one.
“CDPs are much more what people wanted from DMPs (data management platforms) – persistent, unified views of customers across platforms,” said Justin Grant, Director of Data & Emerging Solutions.
As customer interactions are happening, CDPs are the first to know. It’s also the first to react to customer behaviours, supporting decisions about what to do, whom to talk to, and what to tell them based on the understanding of their needs.
Fundamentally, CDPs solve problems that DMPs could not overcome by creating a single view of the customer.
The true mark of successful data transformation
Data transformation and digital transformation need to work in tandem to achieve customer experience transformation.
When data transformation is done well, it is the fuel that drives the entire customer experience and creates value.
No one organisation has an advantage in data transformation; each of them is provided with the same tools to achieve success. It’s how they use these tools that drive measurable results and customer loyalty.
To watch on-demand the full webinar, click here.
