A Data Management Platform for all

BlogsData Engineering

Introduction

Data has grown to be the most integral part of any business, they influence, suggest and even helps you make real big business decisions. It is evident that most businesses collect data due to the increased usage of tools and software to easen everyday errands but not every business makes the most of it. However, there’s a growing trend of analysing data, say, the time period when most traffic hits in, the day of the week most customers drop by, etc.

This write up will focus on the

  • Perks of using Data Management Platform.
  • Steps involved in Data Management.
  • How and why Data Management acts as a fulcrum in data analytics.
  • How Sprinkle paves way for scintillating data visualization.

Customers are empowered on the digital front more than ever, they know where to opt your product and where not to.

According to Statista, the market size of the data management platform (DMP) services market in Japan in 2016, with forecasts until 2022. In 2022, the sales value of the Japanese DMP services market was forecasted to reach almost 11 billion Japanese yen, up from under six billion yen in 2016.

These analysis help the business owners to observe the customer’s behavioral patterns before going all in on your plans. It is wise to understand the data driven marketing approach like who your customers are, what they want and when they need it.

In order to gain a 360 degree view of your customers, you must be acquiring data on your customers and their browsing patterns wherever possible. The collection of raw data doesn’t allow you to visualize the results, they need to be cleansed, processed with the help of a proper tool that gives you actionable insights with which you could make decisions in the marketing front.

To manage these mighty amount of data, it is mandatory to have a Data Management Platform that keep tabs on data and provide insights.

Do you know enough about Data Management Platforms?

A data management platform is a software system that stores, cleanses, organizes, and interprets customer segment and ad campaign data from a variety of sources. These platforms are very useful for business professionals. Not only do they help to sort and analyze data, but they give users insights about how to use the best possible marketing tactics.

Data management platform brings together the first-party data which we acquire, say, CRM, SRM, etc with the third-party data like sold and retained data. Fusing all your data together allows you to get a unified and 360 degree view of your customers.

Attaining a single view on the customers is tough. Consolidation of all the customer data from different data sources might sound easy but it is practically impossible to bring it to effect without a proper data management tool in place.

These data across various touch points and databases don’t acquire data in one common format, they are basically categorized into structured, unstructured and semi-structured data. Bringing together all these data requires immense effort and lots of time when done manually and moreover, it is not a one time process. Data needs to be ingested every now and then or in real time to keep a constant tab on your business.

Data and analytics are the integral parts of your business if you are an advertiser or a marketer, the constant urge to update with the changing trends and the need to understand the users is what this is all about.

Adapting to these data management platform offers an impeccable overview on the productivity front and the challenges faced. The control over the data and the flexibility to handle it allows you to see your business on a bigger note.

On the other hand, the management platform allows one to understand the financial gains, loses and the savings your business makes. We all know marketing is all about a long term plan and the ability to make decisions at the crucial time, this is only attained when a business maintains accountability and transparency of data. Data management platform certainly paves way for it.

Although marketers are growing well accustomed to the data driven marketing strategies, the connection between the data and the end results are not siloed, which leads to ineffective business study.

The solution could be an ETL tool which constructs an entire data pipeline for your business starting with collection of data to visualizing the outcome through graphs and metrics.

Data Management workflow

Data-Management-Platform-workflow

Data Collection:

The data is brought together from a wide range of sources. These sources include mobile applications, websites, customer relationship management tool and analytics tool. These data might exist in various formats, the tool comes into play here. It brings together data of various formats, structured(SQL), unstructured(NoSQL) or semi-structured.

Data Secured:

These collected data are stored in a secured database. These stored data needs to be organized, sorted, translated, and shared with the appropriate parties including marketers, publishers, and other businesses. This platform has the capability to manage and control any kind of information. The data management platform has several facilities such as data classification, data collection, data transfer, data analysis, and scalability.

Data Reporting:

These secured data are later pushed to the next segment of data management in reporting. This is where the data from various source platforms are brought together for analysis. These analysis are solely focused on giving the business a deeper insight. The data fed might be vague but reports are generated as per the user’s needs.

Data Validation:

The final step to the data management cycle is understanding and reading the business’s metrics with the reports obtained. This step stands as the final piece to the puzzle i.e. also called as decision making data.

What kind of data do we need to process?

Understanding customer’s mentality is what data management tools are after, the browsing patterns, the frequency of purchase and visits by different customers or even the returning customers.

This platform allows you to study the things that trigger the customers to buy a product.

Say, the type of product, offers, discounts, shipment charges, etc.

These studies prove to be efficient when it comes to managing customer journey more efficiently. Each and every customer have their own likings and preferences, it might prove to be a tedious task to study them without any proper data management tool. This not only enhances the customer experience but also helps build your business’s reliability.

For instance, your business has multiple touch points across different parts of the world. Data management platform allows you to learn the preferences and behavioral traits of customers based on geographical context. This study gives an idea on what product customers prefer and also about varied geographic preferences.

To study the future with data management tool:

The data gathered by DMP can very much be used to gather lookalike audiences.

Lookalike audience can be described as an imaginary audience of similar likings. These cohorts of people are used to study the potential of a product that is about to be released in the future.

This could also be managed by taking the best performing cohorts as an example. Creating such look alikes allows you to target and attract the audience and bring out new products which could be highly profitable with DMP’s methods.

With data management platform, every movement and activity of a marketer is connected with the viewer’s data and vice versa. This consolidation of data lets your business enhance future objectives and milestones accordingly.

For the moment, data management platform is only capable of combining data from various data platforms and also categorize users according to their browsing, performance and purchase patterns. Hence, not every data management platform is capable of giving you impeccable data visualization, with Sprinkle, you would have a dedicated tool which provides you with top notch data visualization and search driven analytics.

How Sprinkle, a data management cum visualization tool for the cloud helps understand your data:

Users might come into your business with different buying/availing ideologies. One size fits all approach doesn’t work when you are studying your business which attracts users of different magnitude. Sprinkle, a cloud based data analytics platform allows you to study your business’s data and extract actionable search driven insights.

This tool helps build your business’s data pipeline and bring in seamless ETL functionalities to your data.

FAQs

Q: What is a Data Management Platform?

A: A Data Management Platform (DMP) is a software platform that allows businesses to collect, organize, and analyze large amounts of customer data from various sources.

Q: Why is a DMP important?

A: A DMP is important because it allows businesses to better understand their customers and target them with more personalized and relevant advertising and marketing messages.

Q: What types of data can be managed by a DMP?

A: A DMP can manage a wide variety of customer data, including demographic information, browsing and search history, purchase history, and social media activity.

Q: How can businesses use a DMP to improve their marketing efforts?

A: Businesses can use a DMP to create more targeted and personalized marketing campaigns, better understand customer behavior and preferences, and optimize their advertising spend by targeting the most valuable customers.

Q: How can businesses ensure the security and privacy of customer data in a DMP?

A: Businesses can ensure the security and privacy of customer data in a DMP by implementing appropriate data security and encryption measures, regularly auditing their data practices, and complying with relevant data privacy laws and regulations.

Q: How can businesses choose the right DMP for their needs?

A: Businesses can choose the right DMP for their needs by evaluating their specific data management needs, considering the features and capabilities of different DMPs, and consulting with experts in the field.

Written by
Soham Dutta

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A Data Management Platform for all