big-data

How FirstHive Big Data Integration Will Help Marketing, Customer Retention & Loyalty

Big data is often considered to be something that is mystical, magical and indeed esoteric that only tech geeks understand. Do you also think so? Are you too struggling to get a sense of big data and what it has in store for you? Big Data, though complex when you actually want to make the best use of it; but is easy to understand. It is mountains, waterfalls, oceans of data. Big data in a real sense is just data referenced to in ‘big’ amounts. On the contrary, flipping and seeing the complex side of it, the term “big data” also refers to the challenges, capabilities, and competencies associated with storing and analyzing such huge data sets to support a level of decision making that is more accurate and timely than anything previously attempted. It inspires big-data-driven decision making. While capturing and collecting data is one side of the story, it is the insights derived from big data, the decisions you make and the actions you take that make all the difference. Historically, there were people with very specific skill sets, called data scientists, who could interpret big data to convert it into useful marketing information. Only large enterprises could afford services of these data scientists. But, with development in technology, growing reach of the internet and more and more enterprises making ‘digital’ as their core; things have changed. These developments have provided an effective environment for building our big data analytics product, FirstHive. Big Data for everyone FirstHive, our SaaS based technology products platform, works with big data and brings substantial impact in the key area of integrated marketing management strategy. With FirstHive, it is possible for the enterprises of all sizes, across all sectors, to reap the benefits of big data. FirstHive is using the high invention to provide Big data analytics for its customers. FirstHive Big Data Power The ultimate goal of FirstHive is to utilize the power of big data to help enterprises achieve business objectives. FirstHive integration empowers the brands to engage better with its customers, retain its customers, convert customers into brand advocates, optimize the marketing processes, and manage their multi channel marketing campaigns. Customer engagement FirstHive with big data can deliver insights into not just who your customers are, but where they are, what they want, how they want you to contact them and when they want to be contacted. Customer retention and loyalty FirstHive with big data can help you discover what influences customer loyalty and what keeps them coming back again and again. Marketing optimization/performance FirstHive with big data can help you determine the optimal marketing spend across multiple channels, as well as continuously optimize marketing programs through testing, measurement and analysis. Multichannel campaign management FirstHive enables you to define, orchestrate and communicate offers to customers across websites, mobile, social, direct mail, call centers, and email. Digital marketing, which continues to be integrated with campaign management, includes addressable branding/advertising, contextual marketing, and transactional marketing. Digital marketing extends the marketing process through channels such as the Web, video, mobile and social applications, point-of-sale terminals, digital signage, and kiosks. Bigger marketing with FirstHive FirstHive’s goal is to allow its customers to quickly visualize key patterns and behaviors so they can better anticipate and refine strategies in real-time. Aimed at marketers and business analysts, FirstHive is designed to process large volumes of unstructured and structured data from varied sources and deliver meaningful information.

10 Ways Marketers are Using Technology to Improve Customer Experience

Marketing Technology as a sector is growing at a break neck pace and gaining traction, even among traditional markets. With CMOs becoming big spenders on technology, the lines between the CMO and the CIO organisations is quickly becoming blurred w.r.t. who wields the decision-making ability regarding such spends. While we will see the CMOs and CIOs working closely to identify and deploy marketing solutions, the below list attempts to list a few important areas where MarTech spends are expected over the coming months. Geofencing Geofencing is essentially creating a geographic demarcation such that shoppers within a specific area receive special coupons or offers that can be redeemed at a retail outlet. This can thus be used for either driving walk ins to a store or persuade the customers to spend more in-store. E.g. Walmart’s app has a store mode that responds to geofencing around stores and delivers coupons and special offers intended to drive walk ins. Starbucks was also planning to launch an ‘order ahead’ service wherein customers can order while on the move in the vicinity of a store, and just come in to pick up their order. With the Internet of Things gaining traction as well, there are companies experimenting with smart devices that perform some action depending on your location trigger w.r.t. the device, e.g. your refrigerator ordering foodstuff when you are home and then sending a text reminder, to ensure you are available to take the delivery. Beacons In theory, some may argue that Beacons are a subset of geofencing solutions itself, wherein several large retailers like Macy’s, Starbucks, American Outfitters are setting up bluetooth based text communication with the shoppers who walk in the store, the reason it is called out separately is the increasing role of Beacons in the space of mobile and proximity payments. This opens up a whole new experience for the shoppers which transcends traditional commerce mechanisms. In addition, shoppers can also choose to tag certain products through a website or social page, and get a custom notification sent to them when they walk into a store. Beacons are also increasingly used in events for calling out the various streams and discussions underway across the venue. Marketing Automation Tools Marketing Automation is one of the simplest and potent marketing tools in your arsenal. Simply put, marketing automation is the automation of all repetitive tasks that make up your marketing and sales process. For example, wishing your customers on their anniversaries or birthdays, sending seasons’ greetings, or even cross-channel communication of updates based on certain preconfigured triggers. Traditionally used by SMEs with limited Capex spend appetite, or struggling with lack of IT resources to configure specific database triggers for the business, marketing automation is increasingly penetrating even traditional, non-digital savvy sectors While there exist many marketing automation tools in the market, marketers are looking for platforms that enable cross-channel automation based on either preset triggers, or responses on a campaign sent through a particular channel. Multi Channel engagement tools Your customer today does not interact with you on a single channel alone. 81% of shoppers search online before making a buying decision. A vast majority ask for the opinions of their friends or family. Many customers also prefer making multiple visits to the store before they finally make a buying decision, more so for a high involvement category or expensive product. As a brand, you would also have laid out multiple other touch points which can be used by your customer to interact with you. White data (like white noise) that gets generated across all the channels and touchpoint can be leverage for some interesting behavioural insights if captured and analysed, else learnings are lost forever. Marketers need to invest in customer engagement platform which is capable of multi-channel engagement while providing actionable insights. Social Listening In the time it takes you to read this post, tens of millions of shoppers across the globe would be talking about brands and products across social media. As a channel, social is perhaps the most potent in terms of ‘propensity to engage’, as well as one which provides real-time feedback. Recognising the power of the medium, shoppers also tend to place their trust in brands which are active across social channels like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, among others, since it offers them a non-obtrusive communication channel, unlike the traditional customer support channels that they are exposed to. This becomes all the more important for B2C companies who deal with a large number of shoppers, who demand personal attention and acknowledgement. It helps if you have the tools to measure the sentiment of a conversation while responding, to ensure that you are able to give your brand a human face. Social listening is also a great source for you to gauge your competition and gain insights that can prove invaluable for your brand to win that elusive incremental market share. CRM and opportunity management tools In most B2B companies, 80% – 85% of leads are never converted to sales. A major reason for the low conversions is typically unstructured follow-up, in the absence of a structured toolset to qualify marketing leads. Marketing and Sales automation increase the lead throughput, increase the quality of leads in the funnel, improve sales effective and productivity while providing a clear, unambiguous view of the funnel health. Single Window view of the customer While customers today interact with you across various channels, their personas are different across the channels. It is pertinent for your brand to initiate and maintain a meaningful dialogue across channels to be able to map the said personas and conversations across channels to a unique shopper. If I have been a consumer of your brand for the last couple of years, would your messaging to me still be “Hey, I am a great product”, or would it rather be a “Welcome back”. Most brands, however, are still struggling to create this single view of the customer that maps all his interactions and transactions with the brand, across multiple touchpoints. Virtual Reality Marketers are also increasingly looking at Virtual Reality to instigate customers to engage with their brand. By definition, these experiences need to be realistic so as to provide the customer with a glimpse into what he is missing. This typically works great for any experiential category like travel, real estate, etc. Mariott, in fact, rolled out a ‘Travel brilliantly’ campaign that gave its prospects a virtual version of travel to London and Hawaii. This obviously inspired travellers to book their travel to such locations, while also helping the brand connect with young, tech-savvy consumers. Red Bull offers immersive VY experience for its audiences by allowing the audiences at its extreme flying races, enabling fans to experience being on the plane, and not just watch it fly by. Brands are also looking at virtual reality platforms to set up inexpensive test layouts of new retail outlets and observing customer browsing patterns trough such platforms. Wearable Tech Wearables allow a hyper personalised marketing approach towards your customers and evolved marketers are busy experimenting their plans on this platform. A major advantage of wearables will be the new chunk of data that is released from this platform, and how a marketer can best leverage the same. However, this data flow will need to be 2 way for creating a meaningful experience. A prime example would be the Nike ‘Our Year’ campaign wherein Nike created personalised animated films for users showcasing their athletic prowess over the year, and challenging them to outdo themselves the next year. Data privacy concerns may still play spoilsport here but with space still evolving, some marketers are hoping to gain the early mover advantage on this platform. Analytics What cannot be measured, cannot be improved – Peter Drucker With a multitude of data sources permeating the value chain, the customer today generates white data across touchpoint, which marketers are trying to capture in order to gauge insights. However, while tools like Google Analytics and MixPanel can give you your web analytics, it is for the marketer to effectively evaluate the business metrics like ROI, channel performance, engagement, and propensity to buy or respond, using these or similar tools. With a clear distinction drawn between marketing analytics and web analytics here, the smart marketer is aware of the key drivers and triggers of his business, and is increasingly investing in new tools to help him measure, track, and optimise the same.

FirstHive Cross-Channel Marketing Platform is now Live!

The way consumers and brands interact with each other is evolving. While a large brand would try and achieve the capability to track and analyse the data generated across the multitude of touchpoints, smaller brands and businesses struggle with far more basic concerns. The SMEs are not typically involved in tracking millions of consumer transactions but are more involved in how to have a more meaningful engagement with the set of prospects or customer leads that they possess. Optimising their Marketing ROI is of prime focus while higher conversions and retentions are obviously the goal. This is where a platform like FirstHive DIY comes into play. While this technology was currently exclusive to the domain of very large global brands, with the launch of the Beta of the FirstHive DIY product, the same technology is now available for SMEs globally. This means that a small or medium business owner or marketer, be it across retail, hospitality, or professional services, can utilize this product. The marketers can now leverage the power of cross-channel marketing to improve their customer experience, and in turn, improve their top and bottom lines. What does this mean for Email marketing? Remember the time that you would send out bulk mails to your entire prospect list and pray for a conversion. This was independent of whether the prospect was interested in your product, whether the prospect had ever engaged with you on this channel, when was the best time to send someone a mail, or thinking about if there was a better way to nudge this user towards your business objective. FirstHive enables actionable dashboards and intelligence pulled out across channels to enable you to get the optimal target list to send a campaign. The built-in segmentation tool ensures that you send out the communication only to the relevant recipients, who may have a higher propensity to convert as compared to others. What does this mean for SMS marketing? In a nutshell, it implies that a global reseller sitting in Jakarta can engage with his customers using multiple local long codes and still ensure complete control over the communication going out to his customers, while receiving comprehensive dashboards and reports. Or that a UK-based travel business will coordinate with all their US partners, using a local US long code, while viewing all interactions in a consolidated dashboard. SMS marketing has never been simpler. What does this mean for social media channels management? Simple, single interface management of all your social conversations – this is what FirstHive means for social channel management. Use FirstHive for engaging with your customers and followers across Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, while maintaining a unified dashboard view to help you gauge the most effective channel, depending on your objectives. We have just unveiled the first curtain of many. The woods are lovely, dark and deep,. But we have promises to keep, and miles to go before we sleep. So, have you thought about setting up your FirstHive?

Marketing Technology: 2016 in Review and what to focus on in 2017

It’s that time of year again when brands and marketers dust off their crystal balls and try to predict the coming year. Yes, this is one such blog too. But we have a different methodology: we are not putting out our opinion but our customer’s data to back our claims. We spoke to our customers to find out their area of focus in marketing technology in the year of 2017. And the results were interesting, to say the least. First, let me give you the profile of our customers. They belong to Small and Medium sized business category, having employee strength of around 500-3500 and having annual revenues between $25 Mn – $500 Mn. Most of them are located in United States, Australia, Canada and UK. We spoke to 452 such businesses to find out what was the concern when they started the new year and what will they focus on going into 2017, with respect to marketing technology, of course. Here is a quick snapshot of their two answers: When SMB marketers started 2016, they were pretty focused on exploring mobile platform to reach out to their customers and be heard. In one of our blogs earlier this year, we have mentioned that a person checks his phone 85 times a day, on average. That is what was most intriguing for the marketers. The second area of focus was to use technology in automating marketing for their customers. This is interesting as we have seen our customers getting surprising results in winning new customers as well as gaining repeat customers, just by personalizing messages and sending them at the right time. Marketing automation offers tremendous opportunities when done right, maybe that is why it is the most focused area for marketers for the coming new year. Let’s check out their shift in focus for the new year: Customer experience and personalization are the two most important focus points with all the marketers. That was redundant to be given as an option choice. Rather, we asked them what technologies are they focusing on to design amazing personalized experience for their customers. Here is a snapshot of the survey result: Marketing Automation: Learned from the past, good marketing automation can create seamless and personalized customer experience by letting a platform deal with new and returning visitors. If you set your rules right, there’s no loopholes and your customers are entertained individually, one-to-one (which is the best experience your customers are looking for). So, the marketing automation technology will the primary focus of marketers going into 2017. Mobile Marketing: Although slipped to the second spot as their focus, marketers just cannot put the mobile phones away. Well, who can? There’s a lot lot of opportunities for a marketers to reach its audience over the small screen device. Beside the traditional text SMS (which is still the most profitable way), they are taking on social media. Even social media companies are constantly updating their apps with new features that creates a good advertising platform. Did you think ‘Live’ feature on Facebook was introduced for the muggles like you and me? Big Data: Isn’t it odd that we are still talking about big data in 2017? I guess, no. Still there’s a need to shake and filter customer’s behavior data to squeeze out most critical and actionable information. Marketers don’t want to lose out on any vital information about their customer that might cost them a deal. So, they turn to technology. Applications like FirstHive collect customer data and present most relevant information so that marketers can talk to customers with a right message at a right time. Content Marketing: Marketers are ready to take content marketing more seriously in the coming year. As one of them said, “Just content cannot be the king, but a content in right context is the new king”, they know how important it is to create relevant content and share it with the prospects. Also, the form in which the content is served is important. Like going forward, videos will be the major form of content consumption. Videos have worked extremely well in the past for our customer, mainly because it’s more engaging, explanatory, fast and easy to consume. Internet of Things: Imagine a world where everything in your view is connected to a single network. You will have single point of command over your stuffs. But that’s not the point. IoT brings tremendous marketing opportunity. If you are milk seller, and your customer’s refrigerator notifies you every time that they are running out of milk, won’t you love that. IoT, of course, is the next big thing, but still very nascent today. I expect marketers put more focus on this amazing technology next year. AI and Chatbots: Very similar to marketing automation, artificial intelligence is gaining the limelight slowly. AI has a huge potential in terms of creating real-time customer experience. Take chatbots for example. Chatbots can talk to your customers as a real person and address to their queries quite fine. Again, Facebook messenger has this feature to provide you AI power. I can’t resist mentioning the Jarvis, the AI personal assistant, developed by Mark Zuckerberg, which takes the AI technology to another level and will be in the mainstream in next couple of years. Feels like Tony Stark already? Search Engine Optimization: Talking about future, let’s not leave the past behind. SEO is still in the focus list of marketers and the fight to rank first continues. Getting visitors organically is good, both cost-wise and quality-wise. So, SEO thingy is not going to get off the list pretty soon. In 2017, try to keep your content relevant and use keywords which you think your customers use. Don’t flood your website with keywords and irrelevant content. That’s counter-productive since the search engines are getting smarter. Do you agree with the views or have something else as your focus point in marketing? Let us know in the comments below.

How to build quality customer database for free?

Marketing technology is getting stronger every passing day. Marketers have software that takes care of their customer engagement and conversions. But what about Acquisition? Be a struggling startup or comfortably running business, we all need a quality customer datalist to reach out to before we put the list into automation software for engagement and sale. You can buy list. Pros: Readymade list of targeted prospects. Cons: Bad quality, contacts are generally not updated, costs a lot, lowest ROI etc. Buying list is a desperate move and we won’t suggest that. Let me share few ways in which you may build a genuine customer list by yourself. I’m sure you are already doing few of them. Newsletter subscription: Sorry to name the most common trick in the world to get prospect’s email ID, but it really works. Not just newsletter, you may ask them to subscribe for anything and everything. Say, daily quotes, cartoon memes, fun facts, offers & discounts etc.. whatever suits your business. Just find a way to reach their inbox and soon you may have a two way conversation. Downloadable Resources: People on the internet crave for good, interesting stuffs. Create resources that they would want to read or share. Resources can be in the form of Whitepaper, Webinar, Infographic, Case Study etc. Post an extract (snapshot) of your creation and ask people to put their email IDs to download whole stuff. This works better over time, once your work starts getting traction and people believe in your write-ups. Initially, your trick is – pick hot, burning, irresistible topics. Lead Generation Forms: This is probably the best way to collect customer contact details. Applications like FirstHive helps you create a form and put it on your website. People filling up the form are automatically added to a datalist which you may use to perform campaigns, from within application itself. Look at the example: Surveys/Quiz: Create an interesting, sharable survey or quiz related to your business. Use free tools like Google. Share it with your friends, relatives and ask them to forward. If at all you need, provide rewards for completing the survey or quiz. This will increase the virality. A friend of mine, who owns baby clothes store, shared a baby-related quiz among young moms community and offered them 10% discount on next purchase. Long story short, he had to extend the quiz submission deadline. Social Media posts: If you can get a bit cheeky with your marketing, try luring people into submitting their phone numbers or email IDs on your social media posts. A bit of warning: This doesn’t work for every product and there’s a chance of brand image taking a hit. Anyway, if done right and creatively, it can gain you the contacts. Take a look at an example (nevermind the graphic, I’m bad at designing): Trade Shows: Okay, trade shows will cost you a lot if you exhibit or sponsor. That’s crazy money dudes drain. Nevertheless, you can be a visitor at a relevant trade show and can still earn lot of contacts. Say suppose you have a product that start-ups might use, go to a start up event. They will be more eager to talk to you. Walk to all the stalls and exhibits. Exchange cards and keep following up. That’s easy 100-200 contacts, depending on size of the event. Review websites: This is kind of a hack to poach your competitor’s customers. Be it software, hospital or restaurant, every business is listed on some or the other review website. Go to such website, look at the reviews of your competitors. Find out the details of the person who wrote a review. Voila! You have your list of hot prospects. Cheeky, right? Verification Code: If you have a prospect’s email ID and can manage to make her login to your website, you ask for their mobile number in the name of security. You might have seen this pop-up in some websites saying, “Add a layer of security by adding your mobile number” or “Verify your mobile number for two-way authentication”. While few of them are genuine, more often than not it’s a scam to get your contact number. Although it’s a hack to get people’s contact, it’s an unethical practice and we don’t recommend. With no money and a great product in hand, all you need a quality prospect’s list and a rocking marketing software that will enable the smooth communication with real-time analytics. At FirstHive, we are doing our bit to help marketers worldwide with the power of technology. If you have more ways to collect customers contacts without spending money, do let me know in the comments. I’d love to learn more ways.

CDP VS DMP, What Should I use?

CDP VS DMP, what should I use? A question all Marketers ask. With CDP evolving, Marketers using DMP are not sure whether they now need a CDP and if CDP is any different than DMP. We get this questions a lot and we hope by the end of this read you will be able to make that wise decision Note: This is a very generalized view of DMP and CDP (from FirstHive perspective). Since not all DMPs are created equal, if you have specific questions about a particular DMP, we can go deeper based on our clients’ experiences.

Growing need for Data Protection and Customer Expectations, Governing Regulations

Evolving enterprises rely on multiple storage options. They could be across any or all of the available options — on-premise hardware, software, and cloud-based systems. The pressure of compliance increases with multi-location storage. Data security and data privacy become top priorities with the threat of increasing the cost of legal ramifications, customer disputes, and oversight leading to data breaches. It is not just about being fined as Google or Facebook of the world. Businesses offering financial, retail, content, healthcare, and other similar services that rely on customer data to fulfill or enhance the product need to adhere to the global data protection regulations. Their data protection policy needs to spell out detailed cookie and privacy policies that educate the customers about how their data is being used and how they can opt-out of the service to protect their data privacy. Who is responsible for Data Protection? To be able to achieve a transparent and compliant organizational data protection policy, CIOs, CMOs, and CDOs look for collaborative assistance from each other. Data is a common asset handled by these three roles among the leadership. Data as an asset is included as an element for valuation in the financial balance sheet. Predictions score the collective sum of the world’s data will grow from 33 zettabytes in 2018 to 175ZB by 2025, for a compounded annual growth rate of 61 percent. The growing importance of data requires Data managers to stay ahead of the changing regulatory landscape. We have created a comprehensive data protection handbook spread across episodes addressing many of the country-specific data laws and regulations. One common aspect that comes to their rescue is a Customer Data Platform (CDP) that complies with several data laws. CDPs are designed for data audits in continuum to avoid breaches. Here is a quick overview of why CDPs protect organizations against international data laws. Why do you need CDPs for Data Protection? Third-party cookies are going extinct Traditional data officers such, marketers, IT managers relied on Data Management Platforms (DMPs) to extract necessary data for their decisions. But DMPs used third-party data and data coming from cookies. But now, cookies are not encouraged by many data laws. This has imposed data-hungry officers to look for other technology avenues. CDPs help aggregate first-party data. This technology relies on more than one source to create and enrich customer profiles. CCPA & GDPR complaint For companies to remain compliant with the most stringent data laws, a CDP adds value. Using a CDP, an organization can adhere to the right to be forgotten, reporting for audit disclosure requests, identity resolution, and cross-channel preferences that each customer opts for. Programmatic advertising adherence With newer regulations like the Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA), programmatic advertising becomes more complex. There are multiple permissions that a business needs to seek and the data collected for a given purpose cannot be repurposed for a different reason during the long course of association. This delays launch of ad campaigns in a programmatic manner. However, with a CDP that tracks such laws and allows the marketer to segment with legal criteria, the process of gathering traction and data through programmatic ad efforts can be shortened. Sector-specific Data Laws Data is treated in a different way by each industry and further by each sub-sector. CDPs can be leveraged to meet the needs of retail, financial institutions, manufacturing, digital business, and others, in exclusivity. Marketing Ecosystem for Data Protection It is not just businesses, but the entire ecosystem that adds to a marketer’s context is receiving a facelift. For instance, browsers have tightened their services and how users can deploy them, how much do online survey tools, email marketing providers allow users to gather lead and customer data, and moreover the entire marketing technology space has shied away from flaunting data collection as a feature in their product feature lists. Customer Data Platforms help in some or all of the following ways to help a collective shift towards data protection. Curate a digitized and centralized repository of metadata for consistent, secure, and efficient governance across data stores. Deliver an automated solution to identify sensitive data in accordance with the applicable data protection regulations and map the same with relevant data protection policy. Policy-based data anonymization with different laws emerging from different nations. Leverage an approach of centralized monitoring of the policy with localized policy processing of sensitive data. Enable role-based data access to deal with sensitive data management. Promote shorter deployment cycles of agile development methodology demands prompt availability of privacy-safe test data for development and testing. The collective shift in the marketing ecosystem presents a need to look for more reliable and robust data management options. CDP being the one that promises data compliance. To know more or to arrange a demo, write to us at marketing@firsthive.com

CDPs comes to the rescue of marketers to deal with CCPA

#Ownyourdata campaign created ripples across the world. It led the movement towards providing the right to data privacy for consumers. Every nation responded to this ask from the consumers. National legislations reacted to it with national data privacy laws that protect citizen-consumers within the country and in an international scenario. Since the United States of America is led by a Federal system. California state was one among the few that passed legislation called California Consumers Protection Act, 2018 (CCPA). The California Consumer Privacy Act is a state statute intended to enhance privacy rights and consumer protection for residents of California, United States. Understanding CCPA Understanding CCPA, in brief, helps determine the onus that is laid on the businesses by the law. Customer Data Platforms like FirstHive are designed and updated to help companies remain compliant with CCPA. 1. Is CCPA applicable to your business? CCPA is not applicable to all businesses and does not replace any existing laws. It is relevant and applicable to businesses that buy, receive, or sell the personal information of 50,000 or more consumers, households, or devices. Businesses that derive 50 percent or more of their annual revenue from selling consumers’ personal information; or those that have gross annual revenues greater than $25 million. For-profit companies do not necessarily have to be based in California to be subject to the statute. 2. How does the Subject data request process work as per CCPA? CCPA provisions for subject access requests. Organizations must be prepared to intake and effectuate consumer access and delete requests as they come in. Businesses that fail to comply with these requirements or tend to release personal information to the harm of the consumer would face litigation, as well as other regulatory enforcement actions. 3. Is Data Mapping covered under CCPA? Data Mapping of personal information is a recommended best practice on data protection which aids subject data requests. According to CCPA, organizations should know the types of personal information that have been collected in at least the past twelve (12) months, the purposes for which it was collected, and who (including the types) of entities such data was shared with, all tracked on an ongoing basis. To comply with this clause, CDP ensures the same and keeps the marketing team informed about how personal information is mapped across the organization. 4. How do online privacy and cookies notices affect your organization under CCPA? Your organization has to explicitly state why, how, when and for what is the consumer data collected, stored, used, and distributed. This means your website should have a clear and updated cookie and privacy policy in compliance with the CCPA guidelines. The legislation requires you to cover both online and offline data means. It also requires you to describe the internal policy that is under implementation. The internal policy should be targeted towards how you ensure that the data hacks or breaches do not occur from someone or a process or entity associated with your organization. 5. Who is associated with you to help with this? Yes, the law also requires you to announce your association with any third-party vendors that are assigned with the duties of managing your customer data. It needs to be a transparent affair when it comes to who, when and where is the customer data made available and for what purpose. How does FirstHive as a CDP facilitate CCPA compliance for your business? CCPA promotes consumer data protection which empowers consumers with more rights than apparent by the law itself. This is where a CDP ensures that businesses adhere to what is expected of them in the realm of data protection. Data updates and preferences CCPA allows consumers to request organizations to update and change their data preferences at any time. Even though the data provider is not involved with the business in a monetary transaction, the right still applies to the consumer. CDPs automate this process and update customer and lead records in real-time. First-party data for Identity Data resolution Businesses still depend on third-party data for some basic analytics and tracking a customer. However, that is not considered authentic by CCPA. It requires a business to use only first-party data to build customer profiles that resolve identity issues that arise due to staggering data coming in from fragmented sources of interaction and information. Right to be Forgotten Consumers can demand any time for the right to be forgotten. CDP allows the seamless implementation of the opt-out and deletion requests from customers. This marketing technology is programmed to provide a single source of truth and hence can update the entire database to adhere to such requests. Cross-Channel Preferences Consumers interact with your business across different channels. Each consumer comes with a unique set of information and action preferences from each touchpoint. These can be asynchronously updated in the database and fields managed by a CDP. Data Scrutiny If a customer demands disclosure, which is allowed by CCPA, a CDP provides a transparent interface of how the customer’s data is being collected, stored, used, and updated from time to time. The rest of the world is responding to the need for consumer data protection. Each nation is releasing new laws specific to address the data needs of consumers. There are constant updates to the existing legislation. CDP brings the ability to execute marketing campaigns in adherence to the evolving data environment across the world. 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Whose Data is it Anyway?

As the old saw goes- Data is the new oil. It, therefore, needs no stretch of the imagination to extend the idea of oil wars to data wars. The stakes for data wars have rapidly escalated as Cloud Behemoths battle for supremacy across international turf. In response, Governments have their hackles raised to combat what they perceive to be a grave threat to their sovereignty. Consider the case of the PDP (Personal Data Protection) Bill in India. It is an attempt by a non-partisan Joint Parliamentary Commission to ensure that the Personal data of Indians adhere to the strictest norms of privacy protection. An ask of this nature has no precedent in the pre-SMAC era. However, Governmental action to this end is an imperative that can no longer be shelved. In this light, it is only fair to ask- Whose Data is it Anyway? Reclaiming Privacy In the seminal sitcom ‘Silicon Valley’, the show’s lead character agonizes over data ownership and envisions a ‘new internet’. Data privacy and ownership are not merely staple fodder in a trillion-dollar company’s legal minutiae, but a living, breathing reality that empowers individuals to truly own their data. Such a utopian vision may indeed someday become our new digital reality. However, in today’s complex ecosystem of tech titans who have long quartered data goldmines, reactive reclamation of ownership may be the first pragmatic step in a long-drawn-out battle for data privacy. Therefore, although draconian, PDP Laws enacted to bring violators to heel is a welcome step towards Data Emancipation. The Law of the Land So what does the proposed bill actually entail? Apart from stressing the importance of user consent for data collection and processing, there is strict penalization for non-conformity. The PDP draws the virtual net around geographical boundaries for data control and storage. PII data are often stored outside India- an arrangement that can threaten the underpinnings of a functioning democracy. Regulatory authorities like the RBI have long held that sensitive data leaving Indian shores raises the specter of a national security breach. While that view may have seemed uncommonly hawkish in the days of digital teething in India, it has taken on a definite air of prudent justifiability in the era of Data privacy. It is perhaps fair then, to have an Act that has teeth and is capable of being enforced swiftly (and harshly) to create an environment that fosters true respect of data privacy. What lies yonder? As of November 2020, the bill in its proposed form has met with fresh disapproval from the JPC. The ask now is to include any form of sensitive and critical data to the mix. This may well engender a discussion on just where the contours of the virtual safety net extend to. Not all forms of anonymized data strictly fall under the umbrella of ‘sensitive customer data’. It is however worthwhile to note that third-party cookies are aggressive ambassadors of advertising revenues. While third party cookies have had their day under the sun, new-fangled ‘mad techniques’ that compromise netizen security has become the norm. Pondering on ideas of this nature brings us right back to the core ask- Whose data is it anyway? Firms that deal with customer data will have their work cut out if the PDP act makes it impossible to violate or circumvent regulatory and compliance strictures that impact data control, storage and processing. Re-evaluating their Cloud Partnership agreements to ensure compliance by the book will therefore be the mantra for discerning CxOs today. Data Privacy, Data ownership and contending with the battles that ensue appears to be what lies yonder.

How Big Data is Shifting The Marketing Paradigm!

It was not too long ago that when the Cambridge Analytica team did their job, the world might/might not have been put in grave danger. The U.S presidential elections is where the focus is on. Cambridge Analytica built a model that could predict the personality of every adult in America. Instead of the entire country, the firm focused on 17 states it thought could be contested by Trump and divided the population into 32 personality types. using this framework, Cambridge Analytica could make deductions, such as those who preferred American-made cars were likely to be a potential Trump supporter. CA helped collect and analyse the needs of Trump supporters and what a typical Republican would want from his/her candidate. CA helped the POTUS in his campaign using big data to have a strategic win over his opposition, something which many do not talk about but is the hidden truth. Big data was also involved for Ted Cruz in a similar fashion. This does not stop here. Tesla Motors have been known to use applied analytic models which have helped the company to be diverse and cut out from their competitors, main one being Jaguar. Tesla fully instruments its cars by default, connecting them wirelessly to their corporate offices for analysis. EMC uses analytics a lot too as well. In both cases, the result is a far higher customer satisfaction score and better targeting of resources to customer satisfaction. This not only connects Tesla to the customer; it helps Tesla better anticipate and correct problems before they damage the firm. Big data does not specifically mean any exact amount of data, it is just a relative term to describe a massive volume of both structured and unstructured data that is so large it is difficult to process using traditional database and software techniques. The impact of big data in various industries has indeed bloomed in the last few decades, how it affects the marketing field is too a fascinating one. Let us get a deep understanding as what marketing really is. One of the best definitions you can look up on the internet is this one right here, “Marketing is marshaling all available resources to deliver constantly on the fundamental principle that it’s not what you want to sell, but what customers are looking to buy”. As suggested here, marketing is all about delivery, it is basically how well you understand your target’s needs and how you satisfy them by utilising your resources efficiently. But somehow this aim of delivery is not so successful at times. A study done by IDG revealed that after surveying 300 marketers in the US, their top data concerns were and found the “difficulty of extracting insights” the top concern (42%). Poor data quality was second (23%), while excessive data, number of data sources, list development time and time spent on admin were also major concerns. Although too much data may seem like a boon at first, the cleanliness of it is where your main focus should be at. This is where big data analytics steps in and plays a vital role in developing methods to recreate efficient marketing techniques for all. It is now very common to see an advertisement of a product popping up on your screen which will be similar to some other online purchase made by you in recent times. It is also very common to get SMS’s from various enterprises regarding good discounts and deals provided by them. All this may seem like an obvious and easy method to reach out to the customer but in fact it is the end product of rigorous data mining, cleaning and analysis. A few applications of big data in this field maybe: Customer Profiling- Organisations in all types of industries can suddenly create detailed 360-degrees views of their customers, regardless of whether they are B2B or B2C customers. Combining data from social networks, the blogosphere, (online) surveys, click behaviour as well sales data, sensor data, public data and open data can help create detailed personas and micro segments to better target these customers and improve conversion and increase sales. Those organisations that are capable of identifying their customers in so much detail will be able to deliver very targeted messages, create personalized products and enter in a one-to-one relationship even if the company has over 1 million customers. Financial Services- Automated generation of customer lead lists for specific sales agents, where each customer has set needs and reasons for servicing/ cross-sell/ up-sell. Increase in sales revenue and improvements in customer relationship and experience management through personalised product offerings. Retail or consumer markets- Knowledge of customer demography vis-à-vis purchase patterns and trends can be utilised for planning and executing more relevant and targeted customer communications and promotions as well as improving supply chain effectiveness. Improvement of customer retention and loyalty- Many retailers have implemented “loyalty card” systems that track a customer’s purchases, but these systems also can track which incentives and promotions are most effective in encouraging a customer – individual customers as well as the overall group of customers – to make another purchase. Digital marketing via email, mobile, search engines and other Internet-connected electronic devices has become mainstream. The quantity and immediacy of the data generated from these marketing channels can provide insights to help marketers better target audiences, shape offers and marketing content, and make rapid adjustments to marketing campaigns. The list of reasons why big data is the turning point in providing efficient marketing strategies is one too many, but the future is bright and the big data revolution is going to create a new dynamic in the field of marketing.

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