How 7 data leaders made the warehouse the source of truth for their marketing teams | Census
Nicole MitichFebruary 09, 2023
Nicole Mitich is the content marketing manager @ Census. She's carried a love for reading and writing since childhood, but her particular focus is on streamlining technical communication through writing. She loves seeing (and helping) technical folks share their wisdom. San Diego, California, United States
It’s no secret: Marketers often care more about outcomes than the tech backend of their software or the nitty-gritty of the upstream work done by their data teams. 🚣 But it’s not for a lack of interest – rather, we, as data practitioners, need to help our marketing counterparts understand what data can do for them.
Sure, most growing companies already invest heavily in data warehouses to power analytics and reporting, but advancements in the modern data stack with transformation tools like dbt and movements like DataOps have made the data warehouse a hub to operationalize data. ⚡
So… Where do you start?
Glad you asked. 😏 Here, we’ve rounded up the expertise of seven data leaders to help you understand why (and how) you should make the warehouse your SSOT for all marketing team data. Read on for our interviews with:👇
Question: How did you go from reporting on → driving operational systems with data?
Historically, the most common destination for data is a dashboard. And, more often than not, once data reaches its dashboard destination, it dies (or, at the very least, collects digital cobwebs). 🪦
For many organizations, putting that data where marketing teams can use it isn’t the first step in their operational analytics journey. But for the data folks at ClickUp, the “aha” moment came quickly once they began reflecting on their customer data.
“We started by figuring out what our customers were doing. How are they engaging with the product?” said Marc Stone, Marc Stone, head of analytics at ClickUp, during our panel with him at last year’s dbt Coalesce conference. “And it took minutes for us to be like, ‘Oh, I bet sales would like to know this too.’ So, right away, we started looking at how we can ship these customer insights into Salesforce in a way that it provides interesting answers and get those answers out into the organization in the systems where they’re working?”
Of course, driving impact and actually having that impact recognized are two very different things. But like Nadine Merheb, senior manager of data strategy & analytics at Chicago Bulls, discovered, unlocking your customer data can be the key to both.
“We took all of the information that we have about our fans, connected that, and passed it back to marketing so that we could do things, like understand our fans better, provide them with more personalized experiences, engage with them in the ways that they want to be engaged,” she said. “That piece about finding them at the right moment with the right message on the right channel. That's the place where we're trying to help our marketing department succeed.”
Question: What made you decide to make the warehouse your single source of truth for marketing data?
Data-driven decision-making has placed unprecedented levels of importance on collecting and analyzing data. While acting on data-derived insights is the key to remaining competitive, companies often spend far too much time wondering which numbers from which source are the right ones to use. And that’s exactly what the Chicago Bulls struggled with.
“We had integrations that would go between CRM, marketing, or whatever other systems,” Nadine said. “And that became one more thing to manage, one more thing where the data could be inconsistent, and not match something else. And so you always have this issue of if data doesn't match, it falls on the data team to figure out why it doesn't match, even if they weren't the ones to get some of that data.”
Establishing a single source of truth eliminates this issue, as Nadine saw. Instead of debating which of the many competing data sources should be used for their important decisions, once they used the warehouse as the unified source for all their data needs, they found how it fueled the marketing team like never before.
And, as Connor Dickson, senior data analyst at Progrexion, noticed, CDPs lack the accuracy and trust levels of a consolidated, single source of data truth.
“The more often we can pull data into a data warehouse to be our source of truth, the more likely we are to have accuracy and trust in the numbers,” Connor said. “So, we try our very best to use APIs to pipeline data into the warehouse. We can look at the data in Google Analytics for our Google Ads space that we're spending money on. And right there, the numbers are accessible. But if we can pull it into the warehouse and have all of our data in one report or one dashboard, it's just so much easier for the marketers to have trust in that data and spend less time going from site to site to site.”
While a single source of truth helps eliminate silos and put everyone on the same page, that final step is not automatic. But with instant on-demand access to trustworthy and verifiable data, that step (and as a result, everyone’s job) gets a little easier.
Question: What pushback was there to the adoption of a warehouse-centric view of data integration?
There’s not often much pushback on fresh, unified, and actionable data. Rather, the pushback is often that this new data dream state isn’t available RIGHT NOW (which we totally get, trustworthy data is pretty exciting 😻). As Julia King, VP of data and analytics at Carta suggests, getting to the root of what they really need can stop that opposition in its tracks.
“Trying to separate what the need is, who needs it, and really why is very important,” said during her panel with Marc and Census CEO Boris Jabes at Coalesce last year. “In a lot of cases, people ask you for something like real-time data because it’s what they heard somewhere else, but it’s not what they need for their day-to-day life.”
Sure, for some organizations, real-time data may be crucial to successfully running their operations, but for many others, it’s not. By evaluating your organization’s specific needs and determining whether real-time data is necessary for your operations, you’ll quickly be able to judge (and confidently convince folks) that the benefits of unifying your data into a single source of truth are preferable to getting tons of different data at light speed.
Question: What advice do you have for data teams just starting their journey toward an SSOT?
The journey to the warehouse as your SSOT for marketing data can feel daunting. Luckily, data experts like Connor and Sameer Gupta, director of marketing analytics at Fivetran, have some advice.
“Do lots of research, collaborate a lot, explore your options, and work really closely with the marketing team throughout both the implementation and planning phases,” Sameer said. “They [the marketing team] should have some say in how they want their data stored, how often it gets refreshed, and how often it gets updated.”
Yes, we love it. Let 👏 business 👏 teams 👏 have 👏 some 👏 input. After all, they’ll be the ones using the data. And once you have their needs and goals in mind, don’t start by trying to boil the ocean.
“Start simple,” Sameer added. “There are a million different data tools that any given marketing team is using at any given time, and it can become incredibly overwhelming if you just start bringing everything into the data warehouse all at once.”
Question: What benefits has the marketing team seen since adopting a warehouse-centric approach?
When you have tons of different data sources feeding tons of different tools, it’s hard to get much meaning out of it. But when all that data from all those sources are consolidated, you can really start to extract meaning (and faster than ever before).
“Now that the data can speak to each other, we can use a tool like Census to push that data into the marketing systems, and we don't have to go on this massive goose hunt and try to figure out how we're going to stitch it all together,” Sameer said. “It's already there. It's already talking to itself, and we're able to do that.”
In the age of everything-is-a-CDP, it’s important to choose a platform that truly provides you with the full picture of your customer data. Doing so allows you to truly connect and activate your marketing automation and support systems.
“Before, we just got data out and didn’t get much feedback,” said Krishna Naidu, data platform experience lead at Canva. “But now we have use cases where we get data out, and sometimes it's a two-step process, from our warehouse to Salesforce, and then from Salesforce, it goes somewhere else like Pardot. And then we get data back from Pardot and that enriches Salesforce. So, our use cases are able to get more complicated because there's a more virtuous circle going on that we didn't have before.”
Question: How has collaboration evolved between the data & marketing teams and marketing teams?
To make effective, data-driven decisions making a reality, data and marketing teams need to collaborate well. But how do you build collaboration from the ground up alongside your new SSOT? In today’s digital age, Connor recommends going out of your way to get face time with your data customers.
“I find that face-to-face interaction is key to good collaboration,” he said. “It's kind of like a cheat code for building relationships.”
For instance, one of Connors' stakeholders lives out of state. Because of that, it took them six months to both be in the same office together. Once they met in the office, got to talking, and built a relationship, the stakeholder was more open about requests and questions.
Similarly, the folks at Fivetran also believe in open communication and collaboration, especially if initiatives don’t go exactly the plan.
“We're fairly well integrated,” Sameer said. “We have a Central Analytics Team, which is where my team sits, but we interact with Marketing in terms of we go to a lot of their team meetings, so then we can answer their questions. That also allows us to see what's on their roadmap, so then we can build for that and plan for that, and then also give suggestions in real-time.”
Question: How does the warehouse as an SSOT bridge the gap between the data and marketing teams?
As hard as it is to hear sometimes, no one outside of the data team cares about the internal workings of the team – they only care about how it affects them. So we, as data folks, have to find ways to bridge the gap and help our data consumers understand how our work ties into their needs.
“The marketing team doesn’t care that we’re spending gazillions of dollars on software and we’re engineering new data sets or new ways of working,” said Saadat Qadri, VP of data at Karbon. “What they care about is: ‘Do I have the information I need to do my job?’ The data warehouse better equips our marketing folks with customer insights and changes the conversation internally from ‘We’re engineering data’ to ‘We’re engineering empathy.’”
Centralizing your data breaks down organizational silos that keep data teams and business teams in the dark about each other's work (and the data that fuels it).
“It's the place where we are saying everything is going, so we can be more mindful about the quality of the data coming in,” Nadine said. “We can make sure that we're aligning on all of the metrics that we are using the data to build so that revenue in one place is the same calculation as revenue in another place.”
After all, this is the key benefit of a true SSOT: It improves the quality of data, reduces errors and inconsistencies, increases efficiency, and leads to better decision-making. Then, when you add data activation using a tool like Census on top of your warehouse-centric model, you can make the warehouse not just the SSOT for your marketing team, but the entire company. 🚀
💡 Ready to make your data more powerful, your life easier, and your stakeholders happier? Book a demo to see how Census can help you build granular segments, and sync customer data to all your marketing and advertising tools, without any code. 💪
