Segment provides the customer data infrastructure that helps businesses put their customers first. Using Segment, companies can collect, unify and connect their applications to over 200 marketing, analytics and data warehouse tools.
Seth has a background in corporate strategy from Apple and Bertelsmann Media Worldwide, and has lead growth hacking initiatives for Cloud9, Glip, and Cisco. He is also an avid educator with experience teaching over 800 students in 40+ workshops on Visual Design with Data, Working with Big Data, Digital Tools for Business, and Affordable Web Design.
Build a Reliable Data Infrastructure with Daisy-Chained Cloud Tools
It starts with raw data from whatever source you have – desktop app, mobile web app, or native iOS or Android. The trick here is to centralize extraction of that data in one place. From there, you can easily streamline that centralized data to different platforms simultaneously – from a marketing automation platform like Intercom or analytics tool like Mixpanel.
Next you can enrich it. For example, you can add context to every email address in your base, with data publicly available like the company Twitter handle, or industry in which the user operates in, and get insights you can act on.
The final step is to load all that data into a unified dashboard which is might visualize the efficiency of your marketing efforts.
Start with a Plan
Should you track every click? If you answered yes, take a step back. Now ask yourself what you really need to track not to overwhelm yourself and still have meaningful insights?
What are the questions you have about how users interact with your product?
What are your organizational goals and what KPI’s will reflect that?
Why Centralize your Data?
You are minimizing the amount of tech debt you create, while you incorporate all the tools to your site directly. Every time you want to incorporate a new tool, you involve your dev team to build a tracking architecture. And when you decide to add another tool, like Mixpanel, it requires additional work to change already existing architecture. And so on, and so on..
Thanks to Segment you measure the data once and send the data to as many platforms as you want to, without changing the tracking architecture. You can switch tools, turn them on and off and also REPLAY – which means putting your historic data into the new tool.
Endless Possibilities
Through data centralization, you are able to generate incredibly actionable insights.
A good example would be the ability to hyper-personalize user data. Thanks to Segment you not only know the source of your new signup but can also map it to the behavior that took place before the signup.
You can enrich your user data through Clearbit with publicly available information associated with that email address, details about the company, the person, their position, etc.
You can also segment your users to have a clear picture of your target audience. For example, if you are targeting executives you can easily visualize that data through Mixpanel from the information gathered by Clearbit. That lets you segment your target audience, analyze their interests and deliver content which is engaging for them.
Using Intercom through Segment combined with other tools lets you build very thorough profiles for your customer service. You have the knowledge about how they interact, what messages they are prone to and how to approach them.
Segment also enables you to fully integrate all that external data with a “behind the firewall” data flow. Your data scientist can still work with the data in a tool most comfortable for them like Looker, Tableau, or Domo. All the data from Segment can be easily pulled into unified data warehouses like Amazon Redshift or Snowflake.
Q&A
Find out what Seth’s had to say about how to structure a team around hacking growth; how to create a clear tracking plan that can help you focus and prioritize implementation; the benefits of using Segment as your data centralization app and how it can help you with other tools; and what are the best practices for creating an actionable and effective tagging plan.
Is there an unmissable opportunity you want to pursue?
Talk to Seth directly on how Segment can be useful in your organization. Or schedule a free hour of confidential consulting and see how we can help.
