Personalizing in the Age of AI - John Bourous

KEYNOTE
BOSTON, MA ~ JUNE 10 - 11, 2024
DIGIMARCONNEWENGLAND.COM | #DigiMarConNewEngland
Personalizing in
the Age of AI
John Bourous
SENIOR PARTNER MARKETING MANAGER
SNOWPLOW

© 2024 SnowplowData Holdings, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.snowplow.io
Personalizing in the Age of AI
How real-time behavioral data is fueling
next-gen customer experiences

John Bourous
Senior Partner Marketer at Snowplow
john.bourous@snowplow.io
A little about me
● 12+ years of MarTech, CDP & Analytics experience
● Helped scale GTM teams at Braze, Amplitude, Simon Data, Census
● Love to tell the “human side” of SaaS technologies and impact on businesses
A little about Snowplow
● Snowplow is the leader in next-generation customer data
infrastructure (CDI), enabling every data-driven organization to own
and unlock the true value of its customer behavioral data to fuel AI,
advanced analytics, and personalized marketing.
● Founded in 2012 as open-source project; 2M+ websites and apps

Customer expectations and behavior have always centered
around personalized experiences

Shift to digital experiences was further accelerated by
COVID-19

Multitude of devices
(mobile, CTV, Vision
Pro, etc.)
Customer
experience
Rapid digital innovation has redefined how brands and customers
interact
Blurring of digital and
physical touchpoints
Communication channels galore
(emails, SMS, push,
content, paid
media, etc.)
Gen AI applications
(e.g. digital concierge,
chatbots etc.)

There’s clear business impact in building 1:1
relationships
7
Source: Deloitte Digital 2022 personalization report
of consumers are more
likely to purchase from
a brand that
personalizes
Personalization leaders saw a
of customers would
recommend a brand to
others as a result of
personalization
69%
20%
37%
greater increase in
revenue per
customer

Beyond messaging and content, Data and AI are
becoming more critical to delivering great
experiences
Gartner 2023 Survey
say it helps them personalize the experience
customers get with their company.
HubSpot 2024 Survey
of marketing leaders said they are prioritizing
first-party data to create value for customers
82%
Of marketers using AI,
71%

The world’s leading digital brands
are data companies at heart,
focused on personalizing with AI

Data and technology leaders are under enormous
pressure to unlock a competitive advantage in the era of
AI
61%
90% $15.7 T
61% of organizations are
evolving their data and
analytics operating model
because of AI technology
- Gartner CDAO survey
90% of organizations are
increasing AI budgets with
GenAI playing a critical
role in the increase
- Gartner CFO
survey
The economic impact of
AI to the global economy
by 2030 is expected to
be $15.7 trillion.
- PWC AI study

www.snowplow.io
© 2024 SnowplowData Holdings, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Personalization isn’t just about
messaging me wherever I go…it’s
also about understanding me
wherever I go.

Behavioral data is key for building an
understanding of your customers
Demographic Data - Some person level attributes
User 1
King Charles III
● Male
● Born in 1948
● Raised in the UK
● Married twice
● Lives in a castle
● Wealthy and famous
User 2
Ozzy Osbourne
● Male
● Born in 1948
● Raised in the UK
● Married twice
● Lives in a castle
● Wealthy and famous
Transactional Data
Limited visibility of what decisions individuals make over time
Checkout with boots
Return boots
Behavioral Data
Rich view of how individual’s decisions were made,
within context, over time. Explanatory and
predictive.
Search for boots on
Google on iPhone 13 Pro
in Vancouver
View boots
category
of site
Scroll 50%
Toggle filter
for winter boots
Open 3 boots
in new tabs
Scroll to price
on tab 2 and
close page
Cycle through
images on other
tabs
Add boots from
tab 1 to basket
No activity until
Black Friday
Open homepage
Write review
“color doesn’t
match photos”
Rate 1 star
Checkout
with boots
Return
boots

Behavioral event data is fragmented across the SaaS landscape
Data Ingestion model 1 Storage & Modelling Orchestration
Data Ingestion model 2 Storage & Modelling Orchestration
CDP silo
AdTech silo
Data Collection model 1 Storage & Modelling Analytics
Digital
Analytics silo
Data Collection model 2 Storage & Modelling Analytics
Product
Analytics silo
Sales /
Service Desks
Marketing
Engagement
AdTech
Email
Mobile & SMS
Web
DSPs
SSPs
ECOM & POS
Customer Service
BI & Reporting
ID Res
ID Res
ID Res
ID Res
Measurement
Data Platform
No unified Data Plane for a single view of Customer Data, excessive Latency
No Data Quality management framework across apps
No Data Governance guardrails across multiple copies of user data
Don’t trust Customer 360 to unlock ROI from Personalization and AI
Can’t achieve CAC efficiencies via campaign performance measurement
Excessive TCO and Compliance risks across MarTech tools
Homebrew
silo
Data Collection model 3 Storage & Modelling Orchestration
ID Res
Technical Team Pain Points Marketing Team Pain Points
Data Collection Customer Data Processing Destinations

Most organizations lack the behavioral data infrastructure
necessary to drive competitive advantage with AI
● Silos: Behavioral data silos span multiple
business teams and legacy vendor tools
● Inadequate Governance: Inability to
centrally-manage behavioral data volume
and complexity across various sources in
real time
● Poor Data Quality: Difficulty diagnosing and
rectifying behavioral data quality issues
● Inaccessibility: Lack of systemic
understanding of behavioral data semantics

AI-powered Customer Experience is a function of your C360
(or lack thereof)
We don’t trust out Customer 360 to…
Real-time Content
Recommendations
Track anonymous users
Identify across devices, sessions
Access to real-time data
Potential Impact: Lower CTR%
Predict the Next Best Offer
Complete customer journey data
Historical campaign performance
data
Access to offline historical data
Potential Impact: Lower conversion
Implement Propensity Scoring
Collect real-time behavioral signals
Reliable data at the customer level
Predictive decisioning engine
Potential Impact: Higher churn

www.snowplow.io
© 2024 SnowplowData Holdings, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Marketers must learn to shift from
channel-centric to data-centric in
the Age of AI.
Discover new capabilities
with your technical counterparts.

CDI collects, manages, and operationalizes behavioral
data for the entire organization
Behavioral data is trustworthy
Tooling to setup accurate tracking and
catch data quality issues before
they get into production
Tooling to spot and address data quality
issues in production (failed events in the
warehouse, real-time alerting, recovery)
Behavioral data can power
systematic customer intelligence
CDI has to capture the full OODA loop of
Observed customer behavior, AI-made
Decisions and marketing/other operational
Actions; the loop then repeats
Behavioral data can power AI
features directly
Production level dbt data models for efficient
“gold table” engineering
Behavioral data is delivered to the
data platform in real time
Real-time loading to your central warehouse
or lakehouse.
Data available in real-time in brand’s own
event stream for real-time decisioning,
Next-gen CX, machine learning, etc
Behavioral data is easy for AI to
understand
Data is delivered with the semantic metadata
+ underpinned by a knowledge graph
05
01
02 03
04

Establish an AI-ready behavioral data foundation that
unlocks business value over time
Value
Time
Data Ownership
Create a high quality, first-
party behavioral data asset
in your central data
platform
Analytics
Conduct advanced
analytics to understand,
predict, and influence
complex customer
journeys
Personalization
Personalize customers’
marketing, content, and
product experiences based
on ML next best action
Automation
Fuel virtual AI agents &
automate operational
processes like fraud
detection
Monetization
Develop or enhance
revenue streams with
premium, AI-driven
products

Customer 360 view for a seamless, real-time digital and in-store
shopping experience
Powering next-gen customer experience from their lakehouse
Customer problem: Google Analytics
● Non-GDPR compliant
● Black box attribution
● Daily batch, high latency of 36hrs
● Incomplete user journeys with
3rd party cookies blocked by
Apple’s Intelligent Tracking
Prevention (ITP)
● Unreliable data quality, inflexible
data model
Snowplow enabled Burberry to
remove GA and build a Data and
Insights Hub. Delivering real-time
advanced analytics and powering in-
store shopping experience.
Solution: Snowplow
● Real-time data, processed &
delivered across all digital
touchpoints in their lakehouse
● 40+ bespoke models constantly
consuming Snowplow customer
and offline data for dynamic AI-
Ready C360
Use Cases:
● Propensity Scoring
● Next Best Action
recommendation engines
● Customer Lifetime Value
calculations
● Dynamic Content
Personalization
“There is a massive amount of
business being driven through
these different data projects
and there is one universal
consistent theme across all of
these different projects* and
that is that they require,
fundamentally rely on,
behavioral data”
Ben Stephens,
Decision Analytics, Burberry
60% increased
visibility on
customers
52% increase in
cookie duration
5% revenue
increase in 12
months
99% reduction in
latency for
clickstream data

Optimizing the audience experience based
on rich first-party data collection
Allows for real-time analysis and decisions for their content
and advertising businesses
Customer problem: Google
Analytics
● Requirement to future-proof
stack and move away from
Google Analytics.
● Wanted to empower teams
with high-quality, GDPR
compliant data.
● Data not accessible in
Snowflake and AWS tooling
in real-time.
DPG Media used Snowplow to
generate compliant data to
support real-time analytics to
increase revenue and retention
across their many brands
Solution: Snowplow
● DPG have placed Snowplow at
the centre of their business
model using the data to drive
business decisions and KPIs.
● Enhanced its online advertising
platform (DPG Ads), so
customers can create, tailor,
and segment ads based on first-
party data collected through
DPG Media.
Use Cases:
● Real-time ad-optimization
● Editorial Analytics
● Recommendation Models
● Dynamic Content
Personalization
Powered content and
personalization models to
increase log-in rates by 50%
Respond to reader
engagement within 60
seconds of article
publication
GDPR-compliant access to
behavioral data in real-time
80% operational cost
reduction
“We’re going all in with
Snowplow because it
allows us to have real-time
data… with the entire
pipeline from Snowplow to
Snowflake, taking
minutes”
Wannes Rosiers
- (Data and Personalisation Manager)

Assessing AI Readiness with your Data & Eng Teams
• What existing investments (both technology and human) do we have to address
personalization? What are the current gaps?
• What challenges exist with our current approach from a tech stack and
operations point of view? How real-time can we actually deliver on?
• Where does our current Customer 360 development stand? Do we believe we
have the necessary behavioral signals captured? Are they in a data warehouse,
lake or somewhere else?
• How close are we to 1:1 personalization? How can we incorporate AI/ML
investments to get closer?

Questions?

Next steps with Snowplow
Visit our booth at DigiMarCon
Book a Demo with us Watch: “Go Beyond Cookies and Stay Ahead in a Privacy-First World” Webinar
Booth: 1306

Personalizing in the Age of AI - John Bourous

Personalizing in the Age of AI - John Bourous

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