In the data world, we’re always buzzing about stuff like infrastructure, tools, and all those fancy techniques – it’s what gets data engineers up in the morning. But let’s be real: all these techy details are just a means to an end. What really matters, especially to the big shots in the C-suite, is how all this data stuff makes things better and drives growth. They’re not losing sleep over how neat our SQL or Python code is.

Now, us folks who provide data tools and services, we love to throw around big terms like Customer 360, Personalization, Activation, AI – you name it. We’re trying to paint a picture of how these cool tools can make a real difference in the business world. But honestly, there’s often a big leap from talking about these concepts to showing how they actually make a company more money or grow faster.

Thinking back to a campaign we helped with a few years ago, it’s clear how much things have changed. Back in the day, we didn’t have something like Hightouch, a reverse ETL tool that lets you use your data warehouse to kick your customer data into high gear. So, what’s this ‘activation’ thing, anyway? Well, it’s all about giving your marketing and ad systems a turbo boost with first-party behavioral data to create ads and messages that really hit the mark.

The Use Case

Years ago, we worked with a client, an ERP consultancy, to personalize ads and emails based on prospects’ current ERP systems, information gathered via a form. While they didn’t have immediate access to the form submissions, they could use Lassoo’s tracking code on the page. Lassoo automatically tracks all field inputs, providing real-time access to submissions and detailed visitor information.

It’s important to remember that many of the capabilities and channels in the martech/adtech world we take for granted today weren’t readily available back then. Nowadays, with solutions like Hightouch, not only is rolling out a program like this quicker, but there are more channels we can “light-up”. Here’s how I’d approach things today:

Collecting the First-Party Customer Data

With Lassoo installed, every user interaction on the site is tracked automatically – clicks, field inputs, video views, etc. This is crucial because marketing often rapidly deploys new landing pages or forms, which can be missed by manual instrumentation solutions. Lassoo ensures these are always captured, and the data is ready for activation, eliminating the need to pull from multiple sources like your CRM.

Starting with the business objective

By focusing on a specific business objective, the design and implementation of this data project takes on a different tone. It helps in making decisions with a clear view of the desired outcome and communicates effectively with leadership and marketing teams, ensuring strong buy-in and support.

Putting it in motion

To replicate the use case mentioned above, I created a new page on my demo site with a dropdown list of pets and an embedded YouTube video. The dropdown selection and video watch time will serve as dimensions for segmenting and targeting prospective customers.

After interacting with the test page, the events collected by Lassoo were immediately visible. I selected Goldfish from the dropdown and watched most of the video. This behavioral data is now neatly organized in Lassoo’s Postgres data store.

The tables I’ll use will include the person table containing the prospect’s details, joined with the input table where the dropdown selections are stored, and the watch table where the video events are stored.

Connecting Hightouch to Lassoo

Hightouch has made a lot of waves recently. I like their content perspective around the death of CDPs and their push for composable architecture. I was excited to explore the platform as part of this exercise. After creating my Hightouch account, I connected to Postgres as my source.

With that sorted, I set up a few destinations to sync our data. Hightouch’s list of destinations is vast. I connected Hubspot, Reddit Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Facebook, and Google Sheets as destinations.

With a source and destination configured, I created a SQL model in Hightouch to specify the data to be queried from Postgres and delivered to my destinations..

I wrote my basic query to get the email and pet preferences of the prospects who watched 100% of the embedded video.

Syncing data to the “Activation” systems

Starting with Google Sheets as my destination, I set up an hourly sync. This allowed me to test the syncs without the nuances of each destination’s setup. I then replicated this process with Hubspot, updating a property on the contact record with the pet_preference.

After running my sync the logs showed that everything ran smoothly. I could now see the synced person and the relevant details in my Sheet.

Next, I wanted to send the same data to Hubspot. There are multiple ways to approach getting this data into Hubspot. We could update a property on the contact record, or record an event on the contacts timeline. I’m going to UPSERT to the contacts object in Hubspot. Before doing so, I added a field called pet_preference to the Contact object in Hubspot.

Again I chose a 1 hour cadence for my sync. I made my selection and saved the sync, which started the job.

In Hubspot, I now have a new record. I made a filtered view showing the contacts with a pet_preference set.

Setting up this sync from Lassoo to Hubspot was easy. Before moving on, I wanted to test the handling of new submissions. I returned to my demo site to generate a new visitor, chose a different pet from the dropdown (spider), and watched the entire video.

My next sync ran an hour after the first. The Sheet and Hubspot were both updated as expected.

Next I wanted to tackle ad platforms. LinkedIn and other advertising tools work a bit differently than destinations like Sheets and Hubspot. There are a few ways to sync data into ad platforms usually either as a custom audience or as a conversion event. I decided to send a conversion event containing the value of the pet_preference. This would allow me to run campaigns against this event, and specifically, the prospect’s selection. Due to privacy concerns and limitations with audience sizes, fully demonstrating this use case with ad platforms will be a post for another day.

I successfully synced my data to both LinkedIn and Facebook. In Facebook I now have the pet_preference event received via the conversion API.

This lets me create an audience based on the occurrence of this event.

Running campaigns based on my behavioral data

With our granular events synced to our CRM, spreadsheet, and ad platforms, the creative part begins. We can tailor emails and sequences, run remarketing campaigns with imagery matching the preferred pet, and inform revenue teams about hot leads, all based on the prospect’s preferences.

Summing Things Up

So, what’s the big takeaway from all this? Well, three things really stand out. First up, it’s all about getting your hands on that detailed, first-party data. Yeah, we can do the usual stuff like firing off emails when someone ditches their cart or segmenting folks by how much they spend. But the real magic? That happens when you dive into the deeper, more specific data. That’s where you start crafting experiences that genuinely make your customers go, “Wow!” And that’s why Lassoo is all about capturing everything happening on your site.

Next, let’s talk about Hightouch. This tool is a gem in the reverse ETL world. Setting it up was a breeze, and any small speed bumps I hit were more about the platforms I was sending data to, not Hightouch itself. Plus, I’ve got to give props to Hightouch for being smart about handling sensitive info, like making sure personal data gets hashed when needed.

And lastly, it’s super important for the data nerds and the business brains to join forces when it comes to using this data. It’s like a two-way street – both sides have insights the other might not see. Starting with a clear goal makes these chats way more productive. We’re not just talking about moving data around or sending a bunch of emails. It’s about getting real results. When you nail data activation, it’s a win-win all around – customers get a kick out of interacting with your brand, sales go up, you’re not throwing money at ads that don’t work, and the data team gets to take a bow for making it all happen.