Evaluating the true ROI of a customer data platform means understanding how the technology improves key business metrics and enables working more efficiently.

That’s why BlueConic commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact study that measures both the profit and operational efficiency gains that can be unlocked with BlueConic.

On May 4th, guest speakers Forrester’s Joe Stanhope, VP, Principal Analyst and Julia Fadzeyeza, Principal Consultant, will join BlueConic’s CMO, Patrick Reynolds, to explore current CDP market trends and discuss the findings of the TEI study, including how BlueConic helped customers achieve:

• Up to 90%-time savings on segmentation, customer journeys, and reporting tasks
• Increased profit of $5.4M from improved conversion rates, new data monetization revenue streams, and strategic partnership growth
• Faster, higher-quality decision-making and support for future growth

Forrester’s TEI Study: How BlueConic Customers Reduced Operational Costs by Up to 90% Time Savings

Thursday, May 4 | 11AM ET | 5PM CEST

If you can’t join us live, be sure to register anyway so you can receive a link to the recording.

The post Forrester Total Economic Impact study reveals increased efficiency for marketers appeared first on MarTech.

Retail is an ever-changing industry, but the last few years have been particularly disruptive. The COVID-19 pandemic triggered dramatic shifts in consumer behavior that left many retailers struggling to keep up. These factors, combined with the growing influence of Amazon, increasing consumer privacy regulations and deprecating third-party cookies, are only exacerbating the need for transformation in retail that emphasizes customer relationships.

The companies that have been most successful in adapting to these challenges share one critical commonality: they prioritize the collection and use of privacy-compliant first-party customer data as a competitive asset. The Comoto Family of Brands is one such retailer.

In a recent MarTech session, Comoto’s Dana Green joined BlueConic’s Jackie Rousseau-Anderson to discuss how they are using a customer data platform to unify customer data across multiple brands and systems and activate it across channels to deliver more engaging customer interactions.

Putting data at the heart of customer engagement

As America’s largest power sports aftermarket retailer, Comoto is home to Cycle Gear, J&P Cycles and RevZilla.com. With over 150 stores nationwide and ecommerce sites for all three brands, the company manages a complex ecosystem of customer data housed in a multitude of systems.

“Data has always been foundational to our strategies,” said Green, “but it’s easy to get overwhelmed with the amount of information you have.”

That realization led Comoto on an introspective journey to transform how they access and use customer data to unlock the potential of their marketing channels. BlueConic’s customer data platform (CDP) has been a core component in its transformation.

Choosing the right optimization strategy

When it comes to optimizing their ecommerce sites, Green and her team have traditionally relied on Comoto’s UX and Research teams to provide a testing plan based on qualitative customer research. Using BlueConic’s A/B testing and optimization capabilities, the company can marry qualitative and quantitative methods for a more in-depth understanding of its customers.

“When making big updates to our website, we typically have a theory that we’re looking to improve upon. With BlueConic, we can perform A/B testing on our site to validate the research we’ve done with our customers and supplement it with hard data,” said Green.

She noted that even simple A/B tests could produce some big wins. “Our customers have a true enthusiast culture when it comes to riding, but what they shop for often depends on their riding style. So, we decided to test a shop-by-category module on our homepage that resulted in a very positive incremental lift. Just having the ability to provide someone with a custom experience based on the categories they are most interested in is an easy win for us that has a surprisingly big impact.”

Green and her team have since used BlueConic to ramp up their A/B testing efforts. “We have a lineup of things that we want to test at this point. For the most part, whenever we finished a test, it usually begs another question.” But she also cautions others to start small, as tests can get complicated. To tee up tests for success, she recommends:

• Testing something that’s going to have enough traffic to get a good read on what you’re trying to answer.
• Making sure you’re clear with your hypothesis and what you’re trying to solve.
• Defining clear success metrics.

Moving from touchpoints to journeys

Green and her team have also been able to use the learnings from A/B testing as building blocks for the larger, end-to-end customer experience. “The real power we’ve been working on is transitioning to creating lifecycles. So, not just optimizing our site, but making sure we’re connecting that experience with our other channels,” said Green.

The customer lifecycle orchestration capabilities in BlueConic enable Green and her team to move beyond channel-specific campaign workflows and instead orchestrate cross-channel lifecycle marketing programs that are responsive to each customer’s unique journey based on the real-time, unified customer profile data.

“When we’re sending an email — how are we thinking about the experience in which they’re landing on? Or when a paid ad is driving to the website, what can we do to personalize that experience?”

She also noted that sometimes very seemingly simple components, like adjusting to where somebody lives or their primary interest areas, can be a really compelling way to develop a connection with customers.

“We have a blog called Common Tread that features amazing content. The data available in BlueConic not only enables us to understand how and when consumers engage with us on Common Thread, but also tailor our communications based on their individual interests. If they are an adventure rider and we just posted an article on an adventure bike, for example, we can promote the article and introduce them to the Common Thread experience.”

Operationalizing a CDP

Green noted it’s not enough to simply add a CDP to your business infrastructure and expect to immediately reap the benefits. Like any marketing technology, success (or failure) with a CDP often comes down to an ability to effectively manage change within the organization. For Green, education and communication have been key.

“We achieve some of that just by inviting more folks throughout the business to our quarterly reviews on what we’re working on,” said Green. “We used to be set up so our email and onsite teams would meet separately with BlueConic,” she continued. “Now, we meet together so we can work on our combined strategies across both channels. So just making sure to that the communication between the teams is connected has been a really easy, simple win.”

Since the addition of a CDP also fundamentally changes how companies can and should work, Green stresses the importance of alignment on the goals, use cases (immediate priorities and long-term road map), timing and expected outcomes for a CDP implementation across all levels of the organization.

“Our tech team is very busy with a lot of big priorities, which I’m sure a lot of people can relate to,” she explained. The ability to access the unified, actionable data in BlueConic and use it to create compelling experiences on the site without tapping the tech team has been a huge help for us. That way, we can keep moving and grooving and trying new things without being held up when our tech partners are focused on other priorities.”

For others who are embarking on their own customer engagement transformation journey, Green has some advice: “Just make sure that you pick a partner that’s going to listen to your business problems and what you’re trying to achieve as a business. Only then can you truly unlock the full potential of your investment.”

The post Unify customer data across multiple brands and systems appeared first on MarTech.

While many companies struggled to adapt during the pandemic, Dennis Publishing, the parent company of popular media brands like Kiplinger, The Week, several automotive publications, among others, decided to prioritize business transformation and find new ways to drive growth through audience monetization. And its strategy is paying off.

In a recent session at the MarTech Fall Conference, Dennis Publishing’s chief product & data officer, Pete Wootton, joined Jackie Rousseau-Anderson of customer data platform BlueConic to explain how the company is scaling its first-party data strategy, including the launch of ‘Autovia,’ a business unit that combines the power of content with ecommerce to establish a highly engaged auto buying audience.

The intersection of product and data

“Customer data has become an instrumental part of our business strategy,” said Wootton, adding that the company uses the consented data it collects to understand its audiences, inform engagement, and drive growth in all areas of the business, including advertising, demand generation, subscriptions, and ecommerce. “All of these efforts are predicated on having high-quality first-party data.”

Wootton noted, however, that unifying data from across channels and systems into a single customer view is only one part of the equation. The data must also be accessible and actionable by various business teams to inform audience engagement and enhance audience-based products – something the company’s legacy data lake could not do.

“Consolidating online and offline data sources into a single customer view provides insight into who your audiences are and what they are doing,” said Wootton. While Dennis was able to collect and consolidate data from across the business in their data lake, it didn’t enable their growth-focused teams to access and activate that data with the speed, scale, and flexibility they needed to optimize customer experiences and business outcomes. “That’s when it became clear a customer data platform (CDP) would be fundamental to what we were trying to do,” he said.

Expanding CDP use cases beyond marketing

At the start of its CDP journey, Dennis Publishing had a very specific vision for how a CDP could empower its growth-focused teams. But as their knowledge of the technology grew, so did the possibilities.

“We started off with an idea of what our initial use cases would look like, but that evolved and changed over time, and we saw opportunities in certain areas that we didn’t when we began,” said Wootton.

For instance, the company originally planned to use BlueConic’s CDP to power website overlays and modals, email campaigns, and other traditional marketing techniques but quickly saw the benefit of using it to deliver more relevant, personalized, and value-driven on-site experiences.

“The elements and widgets on a particular page are now completely defined by the information we have about a particular user,” explained Wootton.

For instance, with BlueConic, the company can now suppress messaging so they don’t offer a subscription to an individual who is already a subscriber. “This may seem obvious,” Wootton continued, “but it opens up opportunities to offer a new product or do cross-sell and upsell. The real estate on your website becomes much more efficient and effective if you know who is looking at your content. When you’re able to use what you know about a person, you can take a much more targeted and personalized approach to every user on your site.”

Driving ecommerce growth through media audience monetization

Wootton also spoke about how Dennis is leveraging the first-party data it already has from the traditional publishing side of the business to drive growth for the new ecommerce side of the business. In particular, he highlighted how the company’s Autovia business unit is finding innovative ways to connect audiences with carmakers and dealers, and drive new revenue streams via audience monetization.

“We have an ecommerce business that sells cars. With a CDP, we can prioritize and promote the brands and products we offer an individual based on the content they’ve been consuming on our media sites.”

“If, for example, someone only looks for family hatchbacks or sportscars on our media sites, we can then make sure we’re promoting that sort of content on our ecommerce site because it’s much more likely to convert,” he continued. “These small changes can have big improvements in conversion, which is what we’re now seeing with BlueConic.”

Change management is an ongoing journey and company-wide effort

Wootton concluded the session by offering advice to other companies just starting their own business transformation journey. He stressed the importance of communicating the goals, use cases, timing, and expected outcomes for a CDP implementation across the business – from the senior-most leaders in the company who are making the technology purchase to the users who are actually in the platform and using it to support their day-to-day efforts.

“We spent a lot of time talking at a strategic level with the whole business about what we were trying to achieve. If you want people to be engaged, it’s the old adage – it’s about hearts and minds. You need to take them on the journey with you,” said Wootton.

For multi-brand organizations like Dennis, he also recommended starting with one or two brands and then expanding from there. “We have a broad portfolio, so we’ve decided to do a deep dive on a couple of brands rather than having a light implementation across the whole lot,” Wooten said. This implementation approach has enabled the company to zero in on the areas where they will see the highest return on investment and the biggest improvements in business performance. Going forward, their focus will be rolling out what they’ve already implemented for some of their key brands across all of the brands in their portfolio.

The post How Dennis Publishing made first-party data core to its business transformation appeared first on MarTech.

While third-party data’s downfall has been a hot topic for the last several years, the conversation spiked up again this month when Google announced it wouldn’t support alternative user-level identifiers once third-party cookies are blocked from its Chrome browser.

As these types of browser restrictions deepen – and privacy laws like GDPR and CCPA become more prominent – it’s becoming increasingly evident that companies must make the shift from third-party to first-party data if they want to bolster customer engagement and drive business growth.

This shift has proven to be even more urgent for consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies like Heineken USA. Like many CPGs, Heineken historically lacked access to first-party data because transactions happen at retailers, restaurants, bars, and/or entertainment venue. In other words, they stand between the brand and its customers, effectively limiting a direct relationship between the two. In fact, laws prohibit alcoholic beverage companies from selling directly to consumers.

To reduce its reliance on third-party data and enable 1:1 customer relationships, the company launched a first-party data strategy to gain new insights and engage consumers in new and innovative ways that are both privacy compliant and offer value. As Heineken’s director of consumer data strategy Rebekah Kennedy noted during a recent session at the MarTech conference, adopting the customer data platform BlueConic has been core to its successful consumer engagement transformation.

Building actionable ‘golden consumer records’

To bring data into their own hands, Kennedy and the team at Heineken set down the path of building “golden consumer records” for each of their three brands – Heineken, Tecate, and Dos Equis. Using BlueConic to collect data from online and offline sources, the company unified its data into individual-level profiles that were then tiered into bronze, silver, and gold. “Golden records” represent consumers that Heineken can develop a direct relationship with through marketing.

The unified profile data comes from Heineken’s interactions with consumers through various online touchpoints such as sweepstakes, virtual events, website visits, and partner retailers (e.g., delivery apps, etc.), as well as offline touchpoints like sponsored sporting events and music festivals. For example, Heineken plans to use the wristband data collected from visitors to its sponsored tent at one of the nation’s largest music festivals to re-engage them by offering tickets for other types of events they might be interested in – creating a value exchange with consumers.

Activating DTC marketing programs based on a unified customer view

With access to unified customer profile data in BlueConic, Kennedy and her team now have the flexibility to activate that data when and where they need it with both confidence and utility. For example, the company has been able to:

• Replace DMP segmentation with reliable, multi-dimensional segmentation: Historically, Heineken relied on DMP-based segments, which didn’t provide insight into who their customers were or enable them to weave ad experiences into cohesive consumer journeys. Additionally, because DMPs rely heavily on third-party cookies, it became critical for Heineken to replace its DMP-based segments with a more sustainable solution. With BlueConic, Heineken can build multi-dimensional segments for use across channels based on consumer interests, behaviors, demographics, marketing consent, and more.

• Using segments originating from BlueConic data is “much more reliable than DMP segments,” says Kennedy. “For the first time ever, we can use Heineken’s owned segments instead of relying on third-party data. With that data in hand, we can design robust, personal journeys for our various audiences.”

• Optimize for media efficiency: Because Heineken doesn’t host the transactions associated with purchases of its products, it has been difficult for their media team to know how to optimize ad campaigns beyond clicks and web visits. With BlueConic in place, the Heineken media team now has insight into how many profiles include a “product added to cart” after clicking an ad. Additionally, they can build lookalike audiences based on their own first-party data to further refine ad targeting to consumers that are more likely to convert.

• Mitigate consumer data risk while gaining new insights: Historically, Heineken relied on an external agency to collect consumer data on its behalf, resulting in both long lead times to get data into Heineken’s hands, and risk when it came to resolving identities safely. With BlueConic, Heineken set up a process whereby data from these external agencies is unified with other profile data in BlueConic and then deleted on the external agency end. This enables Heineken to gain new consumer insights more quickly and mitigate consumer data risk by centralizing consent management in BlueConic. Now, Heineken can easily go into one environment and delete consumer data when requests come in under CCPA.

Proven Results and New Programs

In a single year, Heineken created millions of golden consumer records. Additionally, they see improved media efficiency when comparing key performance metrics before and after BlueConic was implemented.

They’re also able to add new channels and programs to their marketing mix that weren’t possible before. For example, Kennedy noted that Heineken would be launching an email marketing pilot in 2021 using data, segments, and insights from BlueConic to continue to develop a direct relationship with consumers. “Building 1:1 relationships with consumers seemed like a pipedream at the time, but with BlueConic, we’re going to enable our email marketing pilot this year,” she said. “It is very exciting!”

The post Heineken USA builds ‘golden consumer records’ to enable 1:1 relationships with customers appeared first on MarTech.

There’s no silver bullet and it requires a solid foundation of people, process and technology to realize the much-sought-after single customer view. But it’s not out of the realm of possibility. Those are three key takeaways from a recent session at the MarTech conference featuring Reem Seghairoun of multi-brand apparel company VF Corp and Cory Munchbach of Customer Data Platform BlueConic.

In this session, Munchbach asked Seghairoun how VF Corp, the parent of brands like Timberland, Vans and Smartwool, began looking for a Customer Data Platform. (Spoiler alert: It ended up choosing to partner with BlueConic.)

Where to start

“About a year and a half almost two years ago now, we pursued a journey in search of a technology that aligned with our customer-centricity objectives, and ultimately selected a CDP,” said Seghairoun, adding that VF began with its use cases rather than with a specific technology in mind. “And the journey has been going on since.”

Seghairoun noted that any company that isn’t 100% digital and starting from scratch will have the challenge of dealing with its existing data infrastructure.

“We had pieces of the puzzle in place. So we started by looking at the gaps and what we wanted to implement in the future,” she said. Specifically, VF was looking for a technology that supported sophisticated customer analytics and addressed consumer privacy concerns. It sought a solution that was easy to use that meshed with the company culture. VF considered building versus buying, while always keeping customer-centricity front and center.

Because VF operates multiple brands and has ecommerce operations as well as retail stores, Seghairoun said it was especially important that a CDP solution allowed for the kind of seamless integration that the company strives to provide its customers.

“BlueConic’s CDP has the ability to integrate customer data from stores as well as online channels; it has a lot of the readily-available and pre-built APIs that allow us to connect to the different channels that come and go over time,” she said, noting that integration with customer service was also important for VF.

A very deliberate rollout

Munchbach described VF’s very deliberate approach when rolling out the CDP technology within the company, beginning with a single brand and then expanding to more and continuing to build out the use of the platform.

“We did look at our brands and selected one that seemed to have fresh problems,” said Seghairoun. “So we had the low-hanging fruit, if you will. We wanted to get in there and support the brand while giving a CDP a try,” since it was the first time such a platform was brought into the company.

“That’s why we selected doing one brand at the beginning,” she continued. “But also it allowed us to… get people familiar with the tool and also get the technology team familiar with it and see if implementation can go really well before we scale. Generally speaking, we like to approach newer technologies in this manner.”

Over time, VF has learned a lot about how internal teams leverage data from a CDP and the best way to staff new implementations.

“Taking care of the data front — understanding what type of data you want to bring in, how you want to bring it in — strategizing that work ahead of time, can buy a lot of time when it comes down to the CDP implementation,” said Seghairoun. “The other thing that we learned is just really bringing your users along the journey from the very beginning, can pay off a lot. As we did the implementation, we started learning more and more, and I think we’ve become better at figuring out the type of roles that are useful to have in every implementation.”

How to measure success

Munchbach also spoke about how VF measured the success of the technology adoption. “One of the things that I was struck by from the Timberland team during their implementation,” she said, “was how thoughtful they were about the way they were measuring the impact of this addition to their tech stack.” They thought about cost-efficiencies, workflow efficiencies and their ability to provide the better customer journey that they sought.

Seghairoun shared a little more about the company’s approach, saying: “When we’re measuring how well a product implementation goes for us, we kind of look at three things — one, of course, efficiencies. Does it really do a better job at lowering costs internally? Then the second, but the most important one is, does it align with our consumer-centricity objectives? Does it allow us to have that great relationship and provide the experience we would like to provide our consumers? Monetization comes naturally, I think, as the third part, and organically, if you do well with the first two.”

The post How VF Corp made the single customer view a reality appeared first on MarTech.