Bridging the Gap: From Data Storage to Data Activation
Despite significant investments in marketing technology and data platforms, many businesses still face a gap between expected outcomes and the reality of their new data systems. Technologies like data platforms and generative AI promise to enhance data activation and improve customer experiences, but the challenge lies in effectively activating data to drive better business outcomes.
The Challenge of Data Activation.
Many businesses focus heavily on storing, organizing, and preparing data rather than activating it to drive business results. The main discussions often revolve around enhancing speed to market, improving data activation for better marketing outcomes, and overcoming blockers that rely on human effort in the delivery process.
The Status Quo
Currently, there is a noticeable status quo between marketing and IT:
- Marketing: Always pushing for greater outputs and more flexibility, striving for real-time personalization and operational efficiencies. This increases stress on the operating model and demands on data and tech teams.
IT (Data & Platform) Teams: Often claim they have everything in order through their capabilities that have or will be built such as Data Warehouses, Data Science capabilities, and providing a single customer profile with all required data and insights.
This often results in a stalemate, where marketing doesn’t get what it needs, and data and tech teams pursue their own objectives. The introduction of Salesforce Data Cloud aims to bridge these functional areas.
However, sorting out Data Activation isn’t just a technology issue; it requires all departments to come together to remove functional silo's and design an end to end architecture, operating model, process, and capability.
Unlocking Customer Magic
A data warehouse is a valuable asset, providing business teams with well-structured data sets for marketing execution and a single customer view. However, marketing still relies on technical teams to:
Build audiences for marketing campaigns.
Activate these audiences on platforms like Google Ads, Meta, marketing automation tools, or e-commerce websites.
Maintain and optimize technical integrations between platforms to support marketing activations.
What’s missing is the capability to unlock this potential: activating data in real-time between data stores and activation channels through a Data Activation Layer.
What is a Data Activation Layer?
A Data Activation Layer allows users to take action using the freshest data available and activate it across any marketing channels. In simple terms, it enables businesses to use data to drive outcomes at the highest possible speed of execution.
By integrating these elements, businesses can amplify existing technology capabilities and deliver greater value. This is crucial, as many organizations have focused too much on storing and organizing data rather than activating it.
How Salesforce Data Cloud Bridges the Gap
Salesforce Data Cloud acts as an overlay on top of a Data Warehouse, enabling the successful activation of data. Here’s an overview of key capabilities that will help to bridge the current identified gaps:
Zero Copy
One of the standout capabilities of Salesforce Data Cloud is its ability to use Zero Copy. This eliminates the need to move data across platforms and tools within the Martech stack. Unlike traditional CDPs that require massive data ingestion, Zero Copy allows businesses to activate data directly from the Data Warehouse without transferring it or performing ETL (extract, load, transfer) activities. This not only streamlines the process but also enhances the value of your Data Lake or Data Warehouse, making it more Martech-friendly and bridging the gap between Data and Marketing.
Marketer-Friendly Interface
Salesforce Data Cloud provides a user-friendly interface that allows marketers to segment and activate data without needing expertise in SQL or other coding languages. This simplifies marketing operations and reduces reliance on specialist data engineering resources. Compared to the status quo, where businesses depend on data teams to manually create SQL queries, this interface significantly reduces audience selection time from days to hours or even less for straightforward activations.
Data Governance
Data Cloud offers IT full control over data governance and orchestration, saving time and reducing the need for manual data requests. This ensures that data is managed securely and efficiently, supporting business teams without the classic manual query methods.
200+ Connectors
With over 200 connectors, Salesforce Data Cloud enables activation across all relevant owned and paid channels, including websites, e-commerce, marketing automation, and paid media. This extensive connectivity enhances the platform’s relevance for the wider CMO function beyond just marketing automation.
Alternative Solutions
Alternative solutions like CDPs or relying solely on a Data Warehouse often lack the capability to activate data in real-time. These solutions typically depend on transferring large volumes of data, synchronizing data between platforms, and maintaining complex data extractions and ingestions into marketing campaign platforms.
Summary
Salesforce Data Cloud provides a robust Data Activation capability that can transform your marketing operations by:
Delivering a true data activation layer on top of your existing Data Warehouse solutions.
Reducing reliance on data engineering efforts.
Enabling activation of audiences to the most relevant destinations with its wide range of connectors.
Additionally, it unlocks opportunities around Autonomous AI Capabilities with Agentforce, which will be discussed in a follow-up post.
Are you looking to enhance your data activation capabilities? Feel free to reach out for more information.