In the ever-evolving marketing landscape, staying ahead of the curve is not just a competitive advantage; it’s a necessity. With innovation and technology propelling the industry forward, modern marketers increasingly recognize the need to harness the power of the data cloud to drive their strategies and deliver personalized experiences that resonate with today’s consumers.
This was the central theme when we sat down with industry experts from Snowflake, MessageGears, and Frontdoor to hear their insights on how to ignite your marketing engine with the power of the data cloud.
The urgency for modernization
Lorenzo Mellow, product marketer at Snowflake, kicks off the session by highlighting the market dynamics fueling the urgency for modernizing data strategies. The statistics he shares speak for themselves:
- 71% of consumers now expect personalized experiences. This shift isn’t surprising; as consumers, we’ve become accustomed to personalized interactions and are quick to shift loyalties if brands fail to meet our expectations. This creates pressure on businesses to adopt data-driven strategies to deliver the tailored experiences consumers now demand.
- 30% of advertisers are cutting their ad budgets this year. ROI is obviously top of mind for every marketer, so growth needs to come from new efficiencies due to these budget constraints.
- Businesses using data-driven personalization can achieve 5-8 times higher marketing ROI. This again reinforces the critical role of data in marketing success and impact.
The AI disruption
AI is set to transform marketing, and the organizations that have laid a strong data foundation will be best positioned to reap the benefits.
McKinsey & Company’s research indicates that over 90% of commercial leaders expect to frequently use generative AI solutions within the next two years. Still, Lorenzo explains, most organizations are facing an uphill battle with data silos hindering their progress and evolution.
He supports this with a Gartner survey that estimates only 14% of organizations have a complete 360-degree view of customer data. This underscores the critical need to overcome data silos and centralize all enterprise and customer data.
The birth and limitations of CDPs
“The emergence of CDPs was really one of the first attempts at addressing this issue of data silos by the ecosystem,” says Lorenzo.
Their aim was to centralize all customer data in a single location to run more effective marketing campaigns. The problem is many CDPs have fallen short due to outdated architecture, leading to fragmented data and inefficiencies. CDPs often lack a comprehensive view of customer data, especially when disconnected from the broader enterprise data platform.
Single source of truth
Snowflake offers a solution to these challenges, becoming a single source of truth for all data and removing the barriers of data silos.
Lorenzo highlights how organizations can integrate data from any source across first-party, second-party, and third-party data in any format. “Whether it’s structured, unstructured, or semi-structured, or across batch, stream, and shared data. If it’s data, put it in Snowflake, and the platform can take it. Don’t worry about any sort of silos.”
This enables marketers to work with advanced AI and ML capabilities natively where the data lives. That means no more copying or moving data, which means speed, adaptability, and higher privacy standards.
The modern marketing data stack
What’s really exciting is how the modern marketing data stack is increasingly gravitating towards the data cloud, with hundreds of applications available. This approach empowers marketers to use leading platforms and tools like MessageGears to drive the most impactful campaigns.
Lorenzo sums up with a powerful quote from Snowflake’s CEO, Frank Sloman. “The core idea behind the Snowflake Data Cloud is to enable work to come to the data and prevent data from having to be moved to the work. It used to be that data was copied, transferred, and replicated to be used wherever it was processed. That led to massive operational complexity costs and governance risks. The Snowflake data cloud promises to bring that regrettable legacy to an end.”
Unlocking your customer data
Next, Elizabeth Weddle, Director of Product Marketing here at MessageGears, delves into how our platform partners with Snowflake to bring the concept of composable CDPs to life.
Enterprise brands with millions of customers have discovered that legacy martech is getting in the way of meeting customer demands. And that leaves them with some real problems when trying to offer those hyper-personalized experiences.
Even when brands invest in a modern data warehouse like Snowflake, often their legacy martech can’t access or activate all of the rich behavioral, demographic, and AI intelligence they’ve gathered. “Brands can end up sitting on a literal gold mine,” says Elizabeth.
Brands have all of this rich data like purchase history, customer interest, likelihood to purchase, loyalty status, and preferred channel information. But it’s often ignored because they can’t use it to improve the way they talk to their customers.
Lack of personalization not only means missed opportunities to build relationships with customers. It means your customer is likely going to choose to buy from another brand that can directly speak to their needs.
“The good news is that there is a better way,” says Elizabeth. “We work with brands that are achieving huge success in overcoming these hurdles every day by unlocking the potential of their customer data. These brands are delivering actually real-time, highly personalized, dynamic, and relevant communications at scale on any channel, accessing everything they already know about their customers.”
So how does it work?
Take Frontdoor, for example. They’ve adopted a consolidated, single source of truth in Snowflake. Then they are layering best-of-breed tools on top. These tools often include solutions that power customer engagement, like MessageGears, as well as AI and decision tools, identity resolution, reporting and analysis, and reverse ETL that allow marketers and data scientists to work together on the same source of truth to reach those business goals.
This is how marketers are effectively composing their own in-house CDP with those best-of-breed solutions to reach their goals.
This architecture enables marketers to be agile and respond to customer interactions in real-time while also eliminating inefficiencies, data silos, and any internal dependencies that come from storing multiple copies of data.
Frontdoor’s success story
Picture this: You’re on a journey from Seattle to Boston, navigating through various cities along the way. Now, let’s liken this to the traditional approach to data in marketing. Your data embarks on a convoluted adventure, bouncing from city to city – Denver, Las Vegas, Washington, Miami – before reaching its destination. It’s a complex, time-consuming ordeal, and it’s easy for things to go awry.
Libby Snead, Senior Director of Lifecycle Marketing at Frontdoor, (a popular app with one goal: to make home ownership easier and simpler) shares how this traditional approach mirrors the challenges marketers face when moving data.
But now, imagine a new approach – a direct, efficient route from Seattle to Boston. This is the essence of leveraging Snowflake and MessageGears for highly personalized experiences at scale.
The old method saw marketers spending valuable time moving instead of using data, leaving little room for innovation and responsiveness.
But with Snowflake, data became accessible and malleable, ready to be enriched and enhanced. MessageGears then came into play, empowering Frontdoor’s team to craft audiences, campaigns, and content with precision.
Libby uses an example to explain the transformative power of this synergy and why MessageGears and Snowflake became core pieces of their martech stack. What looks like a simple content block below is “actually powered by complex data,” she explains.
Each Frontdoor consumer, depending on their location, qualifies for different services. Being able to tap into so many data sources, Libby’s team can easily build custom content so every consumer sees exactly what’s relevant and available to them.
This new approach offers Frontdoor unprecedented agility. The marketing team can run content tests swiftly, adapt, and learn, all without the long lead times of traditional marketing. “A huge part of what we’re able to now do is learn fast and move forward in a way that I haven’t seen campaigns and programs be able to before,” Libby adds based on her years of experience in the field.
Looking ahead, Libby envisions an even deeper level of personalization. As resources and time remain finite, the blend of Snowflake and MessageGears unlocks the potential to move faster, learn quicker, and truly make an impact.
“If there’s one thing that I could stress as one key takeaway, it’s this. My team can move faster, learn faster, find out what works and what doesn’t work faster than I have ever seen teams be able to before because of the way these platforms can really come together.”
In the end, it all boils down to focusing on what moves the needle. Frontdoor’s journey highlights the importance of agility, speed, and meaningful engagement in the evolving landscape of marketing.
Watch the full webinar to learn more about how data cloud solutions like Snowflake and MessageGears are reshaping modern marketing, and how you can unlock the potential of personalized experiences at scale.
