Getting your data into shape to take advantage of emerging data collaboration opportunities technologies
They make it seem so easy, the technology companies. And it’s hard to not get caught up in the excitement, especially when we seem to be at the precipice of fundamentally changing the way digital marketing works: with the deprecation of cookies, increased focus on privacy, and leveraging of new, exciting data tools.
We recently returned from a wonderful #RampUp24 experience, and are excited about what LiveRamp is bringing to the table right now after their acquisition of Habu. I’ve talked about Data Clean Rooms (DCRs) in the past, and how I think they help set new standards for using customer data in marketing.
But what the tech companies don’t emphasize is the reality that corporate marketers face to use their products effectively. For the vast majority of marketers, data collaboration is FAR, far from turn-key. From my vantage point, brands are still struggling with the basics, far from the vision that’s often painted.
As a marketing leader, does any of this sound familiar to you?
- Lack of aligned data vision or data strategy
- Shared technical teams that seem to never have capacity for Marketing use cases
- Lack of governance, and or technical debt that make projects more expensive than they should be
- Territorial data teams that claim ownership but never seem to deliver
- Outsourcing of technical capabilities to black-box vendors, and/or data vendor lock-in
Addressing these issues are critical to taking advantage of clean rooms and all their associated benefits.
1) Set the vision, drive clarity of use cases, establish business value, and communicate
Spending the time up-front will pay major dividends down the road. Do not rush through this step!
Vendors and platforms might push for collaboration for collaboration’s sake, however any wavering in the understanding of business value is THE nail in the coffin for many technical initiatives. Once you’ve gone through the exercise of setting a vision, defining use cases, and establishing business value, socialize these benefits across the organization as widely and as often as you’re able to. A common rule of thumb is that someone needs to hear a message seven times before it resonates.
Data collaboration requires participation of marketing, tech, product, and legal, and without clearly defined business value these projects will never get the executive sponsorship and prioritization needed to be successful.
2) Manage your customer data like a product
If you don’t share data well among teams internally, how do you expect to share it with outside collaborators? We often see 1P data that is too resource intensive to use for marketers, and this dependency on teams outside of Marketing is the downfall of many a data strategy.
Poor data quality, lack of governance, inconsistent taxonomy… These symptoms often come from a lack of ownership or built to purpose data that was never meant to leave its organizational silo. This #gross, dirty data has no place fouling your clean room.
To overcome these challenges, we recommend taking a page out of the Product Management playbook and consider how valuable customer datasets might be “productized” and cleaned for the rest of the organization to use. Ask yourself:
- What would my world look like with a team dedicated to digital data collection and enabling other parts of the organization to use it through consistent taxonomy and access patterns?
- What would a team dedicated to customer data look like, with a highly available identity backbone?
- How much easier might my data collaboration use cases be if I had clean, curated, documented customer data?
Without driving confidence in the accuracy, stability, and broad application of customer datasets internally – treating internal datasets like the strategic asset they are – external collaboration is destined to fail.
3) Don’t forget Change Management
One of the most common reasons technical projects fail is a lack of Change Management. It should be considered from the very beginning, especially if the initiative is cross-functional.
I think of Change Management as a necessary greasing of the gears – defining the “Art of the Possible”, setting expectations across the organization, making sure everyone involved knows the benefits to them. Change sucks, and without active management people will revert to the status quo.
To me, the most critical are:
- Communication to executives – Do executives (even those outside of the SteerCo) know the business value your initiative is bringing? Do they see what’s on the horizon (especially if funding was available)?
- Communication to other project stakeholders – Do people know that involvement in this project could get them promoted? Or be a new line item on their resume? Do stakeholders know what’s expected and needed of them to achieve that success?
- Adoption – Is a cross functional group using your newly implemented technology or datasets? Without Adoption, it’s impossible to reach the business value you’ve laid out
Again, if you’ve spent time on #1, defining business value, both the adoption and communication of impact will be MUCH easier.
4) Start small, and build as you go, and iterate along the way
We recommend taking a conservative approach that emphasizes simplicity and scalability. Hopefully, if you’ve spent time and energy defining business value, you’re able to demonstrate immediate impact to key executives to gain visibility (and down the line, budget).
The reality of today’s business environment is that gaining traction for large scale, big budget items is next to impossible. The better approach is to start small, iterate, and prove impact in small chunks. A more tuned and successful pilot project that scales quickly is the best path to take.
At Transparent, we’re able to help with any one of these four steps– from helping build the data strategy, productizing your 1P data, executing on data collaboration use cases, or supporting the change needed to make your initiative stick. We pride ourselves on doing the work, speaking with specificity, and delivering actual business value to our clients. Reach out to learn more.