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The advent of the data cloud has revolutionized analytics for numerous organizations. In today's business landscape, the data cloud's significance has been acknowledged by leveraging business intelligence tools such as Looker, as well as deploying Machine Learning models for purposes like churn prevention and purchase predictions. However, there remains a largely untapped advantage of the data cloud — its ability to transform data into actionable insights and enhance the customer experience.
GrowthLoop’s co-CEO Chris Sell recently hosted a discussion with Yasmeen Ahmad, Managing Director, Product Activation, Data & Analytics at Google Cloud. With over ten years of experience, Yasmeen brings extensive expertise in executive positions, focusing on strategy development, leading digital transformation, and driving growth initiatives. Her primary areas of innovation lie within cloud computing, data analytics, and leveraging emerging technologies. Throughout her career, she has consistently delivered significant business value to major global enterprises, holding key roles across the Americas, EMEA, and APJ regions.
Yasmeen's professional background revolves around data science and analytics. She started in academia, where she spearheaded the implementation of large-scale data pipelines and designed sophisticated AI and ML models for proteomic and genomic systems. Her academic journey culminated in a Ph.D. from the Wellcome Trust Centre for Gene Regulation and Expression in the UK. Additionally, Yasmeen furthered her education by studying disruptive innovation and strategic IQ at Harvard Business School.
Yasmeen's accomplishments have gained recognition within the industry. Computing magazine honored her as one of the top 50 data leaders, highlighting her exceptional contributions. Furthermore, she emerged as a finalist for Innovator of the Year in the Women in IT Awards, solidifying her reputation as an influential figure in the field.
Chris and Yasmeen delved into a discussion around how enterprises are harnessing the combined power of Google BigQuery and GrowthLoop to drive growth. In case you missed the webinar, we’ve summarized some key themes below:
The Current State
Throughout the years, we have noticed recurring patterns across various industries when it comes to attracting, upselling, and keeping customers. These patterns typically follow the below formula:
- At the initial stage, a business introduces a starter product with the intention of attracting new customers. The primary objectives here include gathering contact information of potential customers, inviting them to try the product, or providing a product demo.
- Once a prospect converts into a customer by making a purchase, the focus shifts towards transforming them into a multi-product customer. The goal is to encourage them to explore and purchase additional products offered by the business.
- Building on the previous step, the aim is to increase the customer's usage of the product. This involves promoting higher usage tiers, expanding into other product lines or offerings, and even fostering brand advocacy. The ultimate objective is to cultivate a customer with high lifetime value (LTV).
- In situations where a customer shows no signs of increased usage or abandons the brand, the strategy shifts towards winning them back. Ideally, the business seeks to guide these customers through the aforementioned three steps again, ultimately transforming them into high LTV customers.
Across these 4 buckets, we see use cases falling under each of these themes:
“Our job is to tie the journey-making capability to these use cases.” - Chris Sell
In the present scenario, teams adopt a systematic approach to engage with prospects, beginning with the upper funnel. They target a specific set of key accounts, typically ranging from 10,000 to 50,000, utilizing asset syndication across display networks, Google ads, and LinkedIn ads. As these prospects progress into the mid-funnel stage, the next objective is to guide them to a personalized landing page and encourage them to sign up and express their interest, thereby capturing their email address in the process.
Subsequently, nurture campaigns are executed through email using tools such as Marketo, Braze, or Salesforce Marketing Cloud. These campaigns serve to further engage the prospects, often leading them to participate in webinars hosted on platforms like LinkedIn Live or Citrix. Once the prospects attend these webinars, they are then directed to a CRM system such as Microsoft Dynamics or Salesforce, where they are identified as opportunities for the sales team to initiate meaningful discussions.
However, there are several challenges marketers face with this current state of affairs:
- Frequently, data remains confined within specific marketing tools, providing a restricted view of the customer. Marketers often find themselves dependent on data teams to extract lists from a data cloud platform like BigQuery, or they have to make do with the data available within each individual tool. Unfortunately, this data may be incomplete or inaccurate, leading to less effective campaign outcomes.
- Marketing tools often lack effective communication and integration capabilities with other tools and platforms, leading to siloed data in each of the tools.
- Marketers frequently find themselves burdened with excessive manual work as they attempt to address inconsistencies in data and bridge substantial gaps between the various tools required to execute successful cross-channel campaigns.
- Due to the specialization of many marketers in single channels, the concept of a seamless cross-channel campaign that operates on a unified source of truth can often be overlooked amidst channel-specific planning. Alternatively, other marketers may simply decide to focus on a single channel, rather than fight the current in order to orchestrate across tools that do not communicate well.
The Solution: A Goldmine of Data in BigQuery
A significant number of businesses utilize Google BigQuery on a daily basis, bringing in a wealth of enterprise data. This includes first-party data encompassing customer information, transaction details, website visits, as well as data from various digital and offline channels. The goal for marketers is to activate this data in the marketing space.
“We had all this data that was a goldmine–but a goldmine that’s not activated is not very valuable.” - Yasmeen Ahmad
For CMOs and heads of marketing, activating this data means utilizing it effectively to target individuals across a wide range of channels. Google is keen on accelerating the time it takes for customers to derive value from their data. They provide the necessary tools and capabilities to enable users of BigQuery, or those who are in the process of adopting the BigQuery data platform, to activate their data seamlessly across all available marketing channels.
Leveraging data from BigQuery for marketing purposes often necessitates the intervention of the analytics team. They are responsible for segment creation, audience management, and tracking changes in data as it evolves. Typically, this involves writing complicated SQL queries to then export the data into CSV files, which can compromise the data security offered by BigQuery.
Fortunately, there are now secure solutions available, such as GrowthLoop, that effectively bridge the gap between BigQuery and the marketing team. These solutions enable seamless and secure data transfer, ensuring a smooth collaboration between BigQuery and the marketing team's operations. GrowthLoop sits on top of your existing BigQuery, and gives marketers self-serve access via a visual audience builder. Your data is queried in place and never leaves your BigQuery instance.
A Step Further: BigQuery x GrowthLoop
Previously, companies with BigQuery possessed a goldmine of data but lacked the means to leverage it effectively, greatly diminishing its value. However, now, numerous enterprise BigQuery customers can make use of GrowthLoop. This platform not only facilitates the activation of campaigns but also collects data on campaign performance, enables teams A/B test different campaign versions, and writes all of this valuable data back into BigQuery. This creates a feedback loop where campaigns are deployed, tested, and the resulting rich data is obtained, enabling measurement and understanding of campaign performance and return on investment (ROI).
“The reason why we did the partnership with GrowthLoop was the power of the platform. We wanted to reach those marketeers–and if you’re familiar with BigQuery–that means using SQL and coding, whereas marketeers don’t necessarily have those skills. GrowthLoop really gave us that partner that provided the UI experience. Now with your integrations with our generative AI capabilities it's even more seamless,” - Yasmeen Ahmad
GrowthLoop’s mission is centered around empowering teams to harness the full potential of the data cloud, while embracing cutting-edge technologies like the AI cloud. Our primary objective is to ensure that businesses can effectively utilize the data cloud across all customer touchpoints through solutions like Maestro, a customer journey builder that unlocks journey orchestration for the first time ever on the data cloud and Marve, a natural language audience generation tool.
BigQuery x GrowthLoop in Action
Organizations like the Boston Red Sox and Mercari US are harnessing BigQuery and GrowthLoop to target audiences, launch integrated cross-channel campaigns, and measure results.
If you’re interested in mining the gold you’ve built in BigQuery, set up a demo with our team.