In the first video in our Cutting Through The Noise series, Paul Mandeville, Chief Product Officer at QuickPivot, and Kristen Carlson, VP of Marketing at QuickPivot, dive into the importance of building data pipelines for your customer data.
In this video -- Building Data Pipelines for Rapid Customer Insights -- they discuss:
- how the QuickPivot Customer Data Platform (CDP) lets you quickly and easily build data pipelines;
- how soon you can use the data coming in from those pipelines after establishing them, and;
- what the QuickPivot CDP lets you do with your customer data once it's been ingested.
Watch the video now, or check out the transcript below.
Video transcript
Kristen Carlson: Hi everyone, I’m Kristen Carlson VP of Marketing here at QuickPivot. Today we are going to be exploring how the QuickPivot Customer Data Platform allows you to quickly and easily establish free flowing data pipelines, and how these pipelines impact marketing performance. Joining me today to discuss these topics is Paul Mandeville, the Chief Product Officer at QuickPivot. It’s good to see you again, Paul.
Paul Mandeville: It’s good to see you too, Kristen.
Kristen Carlson: So before we jump in, Paul, can you give a high-level description of the QuickPivot Customer Data Platform and what it does?
Paul Mandeville: The QuickPivot Data Platform is the premier customer data platform for brands that want to know, target, and engage with their customers. It’s a complete close-loop marketing system. So marketers can get into the platform, build their database from the ground up, start to analyze and segment their data and build visualizations against that data, and then plan and run full customer marketing campaigns. And then obviously use those same analysis tools to track and measure results to close the loop.
Kristen Carlson: Awesome, I think that’s good context for the audience. So, let’s just dive into the first question around data pipelines then. We talk a lot about data pipelines, what is a data pipeline and how do you build one in QuickPivot?
Paul Mandeville: That’s a great question. The pipeline metaphor works really well for what QuickPivot does with the data as we help marketers build that marketing database. So, just like a pipeline, there’s a source. So, a data source is any system on the client’s side of the fence that contains information about the customers that are going to be used to build that marketing database. And there are multiple sources of data.
The pipeline connects to those sources and allows a marketer to turn the water on. So, you can schedule updates from those sources. Updates can run at different times for different sources and just like a pipeline you can start to filter out data that you might not want to bring into your marketing database. And as the marketer is using QuickPivot’s tools to build that database they can also make their data better on the fly. So, almost, open up the pipeline and almost take the data that they’re working with and apply some transformations to it to make sure that they’re building that perfect golden record that becomes the 360-degree view of the customer. Which, QuickPivot’s always careful to point out, it’s a journey it's not a destination. You’re never done. There’s always a new source of data. There’s always a new pipeline to be built. But there’s also progress that can be made along the way and a lot of value.
Kristen Carlson: Right. So on that note, once you set up the data pipeline, and you have data from at least one source coming in, can you use it immediately or do you have to wait until you have more pipelines set up? What can you do at that first step?
Paul Mandeville: You can use it right away. And this is a theme that we advocate very strongly. Building a marketing database is a journey not a destination. As soon as you turn on one pipeline you have some value. Obviously you want to turn on as much data as possible and get a complete view of the customer. But that data’s actionable right away. So, once you build your first pipeline, once you’ve built your first table, once data is flowing, the marketer can start making that data better by applying transformations to it. And then we’re working really hard behind the scenes to run continuous deduplication, consolidation, and matching logic. So as data about customers comes in from previously fragmented and disjointed systems, we’re stitching all of that data together and making sure that the database houses a clean record, a single view of each customer that’s based on the most complete pieces of information from all of those pipeline connectors that the marketer has created.
Kristen Carlson: Yeah, I think QuickPivot’s commitment to data quality is huge and so important for marketers. I also think that the way that QuickPivot enables marketers to start putting their data to work in an easy and actionable way is really unique. Can you talk a little bit about what you can do just inside the QuickPivot platform once you have your data there?
Paul Mandeville: So, the short answer is a ton. I’ll focus on three things for starters. So once the data from a pipeline is flowing into the marketing database, then a marketer can immediately go in and start to visualize and analyze that data. So, building dashboards and reports and KPIs are all things that are done natively within the QuickPivot platform. And unlike other tools, there’s no step in the middle. That database that the marketer has built, its immediately connected to the tools that are used for dashboard and KPI building. So, you never have to look over your shoulder or worry that you’re building a critical report or making critical business decisions based on stale data.
The next thing that a marketer can do is, based on the learnings from those reports and dashboards and analysis, you start to segment and target your customers. So, querying the database, obviously looking across all data sources and tables that you’ve created within the QuickPivot system is part and parcel to what we do for customer targeting.
But we also take it one step further. You can build complete marketing automations in QuickPivot. And not only run those automations to feed other systems, but we support natively within QuickPivot a number of channels including emails, landing pages, even direct mail and digital print. And you can build those campaigns from cradle to grave right within the QuickPivot system, preview those campaign images with all of the personalization and dynamic content based on the data you’ve assembled. And launch, deploy, and track them all from within the QuickPivot system. It really is a closed loop marketing environment for brands that are seeking that type of complete end to end solution.
Kristen Carlson: Thanks Paul. I know that we really just skimmed the surface and it was probably a bit of a challenge to squeeze all that information in, but we’ll definitely set up more time, we’ll talk with you about the different capabilities that QuickPivot has. And I think it’ll be really valuable. So, I appreciate the time.
Paul Mandeville: Always looking forward to it, thank you.
