The world of customer data is rapidly changing, and companies are responding with diverse strategies to stay ahead in this dynamic environment. At Amperity’s recent Amplify summit, industry leaders and professionals from iconic global brands like Deloitte, Patagonia, Taco Bell and more converged to explore the evolving landscape of data-driven marketing and the profound impact of first-party data.
Under the overarching theme of “Together We’re Electric,” the event explored critical facets of using customer data for strategic advantage, with a focus on the future of paid media, best practices for Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) and the transformative power of establishing a unified data foundation with Amperity.
Let’s dive in.
The Right Tools for a Shifting Landscape
Amperity CEO Barry Padgett kicked off the event with an analogy: a CDP is like an electrical outlet, with all the circuitry behind the wall making it work and the appliances that get plugged in making things happen. The data foundation is behind the wall, and all the marketing and analytics tools get power from the foundation.
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He emphasised the importance of both halves of the customer data equation — what goes on behind the outlet and what gets plugged in — working in harmony to create a seamless flow, from data intake and unification to insights and activation to revenue.
“Customer data should always be two things: reliable and repeatable. Results are only as good as the data you feed it. We must get the data right,” he says. This collaborative approach is even more important at a time of heightened external pressures like regulatory compliance, technical evolution and the demands of knowledgeable and savvy customers.
Next was the keynote unveiling of Amperity for Paid Media, a new solution addressing the challenges to the traditional methods of digital advertising due to the continuing deprecation of third-party data and evolving content and privacy regulations. Amperity CTO and Co-Founder Derek Slager laid out a customer data strategy focused on using unified first-party data to power paid media and be much more effective than a third-party-forward approach.
This isn’t a future state: Amperity is already sending more than 12 billion profiles a day to the majority of top media partners, and brands adopting a first-party data strategy have seen great results, including match rates as high as 85 per cent on key channels, improved return on ad spend (ROAS) by up to 5x, and up to 90 per cent faster activation time for new campaigns. The keynote summed it up as “better data, better results.”
First-Party Paid Media Strategy in Action
Several sessions unpacked the future of paid media, making it clear that this moment in digital advertising is both evolutionary and revolutionary. Things are changing, and they’re not going back.
With third-party-reliant systems growing obsolete, it becomes critical to base your approach on first-party data to navigate the changing ecosystem. We heard from Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Citizen Watch, and Taco Bell about how they’re working with Amperity to unify and use their owned data for advertising, seeing tremendous results.
They shared their experiences with change management when transitioning to a unified customer profile approach. They also discussed how adapting their paid media strategy pushed them to think about other ways to use customer data in different settings, emphasising the critical role of a unified customer foundation in making any of it possible.
Mike Shiwdin, VP, Digital Optimisation, MarTech, Guest Intelligence and Engagement Strategy at Wyndham Hotels and Resorts, shares, “Anticipating your guests’ needs and acting on them is the core of hospitality. First-party data really allows us to truly understand who those customers are and what they want and need across our 20-plus brands globally. So that was really where we first started: How do we better understand who is a budget hotel customer, who is in a registry collection, who’s spending $700 a night at an all-inclusive resort?
“From a paid media perspective, we started with suppression. Without first-party data, we had a one-size-fits-all approach. So that was the clear proof of concept to drive value internally to build momentum in the investment. Now as we’re three years into it, we’re starting to build a robust retargeting effort. And we’re seeing material results. We’re starting to get more of a sense of how we expand out across paid media,” he continues.
“Once we saw the value of paid media at Wyndham, we slowly started to mature into the realisation of how first-party data isn’t just about the next transaction. And we started to see the real value of first-party data and a CDP with Amperity. The next transaction — the value of that is just incremental touchpoints to build a stronger relationship with your guests.”
CDP Best Practices: Scoping, ROI and Use Cases
During the summit, we also dug into the different aspects of using a CDP, including hearing from SPARC Group about building a multi-brand strategy with a unified data foundation and exploring the three pillars of ROI strategy at Vail Resorts.
We had the privilege of learning about how CPG company Reckitt makes a CDP work at a global scale. Bastian Parizot, Global Head of Tech and Digital at Reckitt emphasises, “First-party strategy for us is about how we take control of that ‘seed’ that helps us do better at media targeting, to be more relevant in advertising and start building a direct relationship.”
Sessions with Vince and Citizen Watch walked through a variety of specific use cases for marketing and analytics, with a focus on tying together the customer experience across all touchpoints. For example, Rob Harvath, VP Consumer Insights and Data Management at Citizen Watch, says, “The power of a CDP like Amperity is that it has made my life a whole lot easier, but it’s also made us a whole lot smarter about who our customers are.
“Amperity has helped me tell the company and our sales team who our customers are, all the way down to the individual model of watch they bought. So when you take into account all of our brands, all of the collections within those brands, all the way down to the individual model, guess what? Our data now is structured where I can answer the question, who’s the customer for this particular watch with these attributes.”
We also heard from Taco Bell collaborating with AWS on how it went from having no customer data to operating seamlessly between digital and in-person channels, using data to understand customer preferences and creating the kind of personal experiences that build loyalty. Dane Mathews, Chief Digital Officer at Taco Bell, emphasises, “Loyalty is transforming customer expectations, retail experiences and the QSR business model.”
From Unified Data to The Downfall of DMPs
The speakers emphasised that the success of their marketing strategies hinges on having a unified data foundation as the bedrock. They shared their experience of how important it is to be able to feed accurate data to a whole range of tools for various use cases like omnichannel, multi-databases and real-time profile API.
On the culture and change management side, speakers agreed that each organisation’s initial use cases and CDP rollout plan should be tailored to their specific needs. But regardless of what they’re trying, they need to be able to see ROI quickly.
There was also a session from David Chan, Managing Director at Deloitte Digital discussing the future of customer data. He explained why brands need to make the move from Data Management Platforms (DMP), which were previously popular but dependent on third-party data and thus increasingly less viable. He recommended that brands move to a CDP, which maximises first-party data, and explained how clean-room technology is vital to making that move happen.
Strategies and Tactics Reshaping Customer Engagement
Some of the sessions asked, what does it take to put together a data foundation that can turn customer data into business value? Patagonia Manager, Customer Insights and Analytics, Dan Sundaram, shares, “[With Amperity] we can illuminate touchpoints across the brand that we’ve never been able to see or understand. And that lets us talk to people in a much more relevant, less intrusive way, which in a world of personalisation is the key to valuable customer relationships.”
Databricks also joined Amperity on the stage to discuss the concept of a ‘composable’ CDP, which involves solving CDP-related challenges using individual point solutions, also known as a modern data stack. One of the takeaways was that the point solutions within a composable CDP do not create unified customer profiles — which is itself a highly specialised technical problem that needs to be solved to make the other points work more effectively. (And, incidentally, is the problem Amperity was built to solve.)
The Future of Data-Driven Marketing is ‘Electric’
We’re on the cusp of a remarkable transformation in the realm of customer data. The Amplify Summit offered a glimpse into the future where the power of unified, reliable data is harnessed to drive unprecedented levels of innovation, engagement and growth. The future of data-driven marketing is here — and the possibilities are “electrifying”.
