Unified Customer Data: Creating a Single Source of Truth for Smarter Commerce

Speaker A: Um, and welcome back to section two of mastering your toolkit with Shopify and the Digital. We're discussing how to make the right choices either to whether you're migrating to Shopify and you have existing technology to integrate or you've already made that jump and you're looking to get the most out of the stack that you've got. I am joined once again by Yael from Shopify. Thank you for joining us. For those who haven't seen part one, can we have a quick re intro on who you are and what you do?

Speaker B: Yes. So I'm a partner solutions engineer at Shopify focusing on the EMEA region. I work with partners, agencies, TSIs to leverage Shopify as a platform and for agencies to create value added services for their merchants on um, platforms.

Speaker A: Thank you very much indeed. And we're also delighted to be joined by Niels from DOT Digital.

Speaker C: Thanks Robin. Thanks for having me.

Speaker A: And same question to you. Who are you and what do you do?

Speaker C: Yeah, so Nils, partnership manager at DOT Digital, very similar to Yale, I work with agencies in sort of the EMEA region. So that's predominantly the Panelux and uk, helping them with all things enablement, uh, co selling, marketing and events and a lot more.

Speaker A: Fantastic. Thank you very much both of you for coming back as usual. I'm um, your host Rowan Smith from UE and we're going to get into, yeah, probably the crux of what people need to do to make sure that they're making the most out of Shopify centric stack. We're talking unified customer data in this section. So that single source of truth that we all want for our customer data and how we make sure we look after our customers in the best way possible via E Commerce. There's quite a lot of synergy here between both businesses I think. So hopefully that's going to be useful for everybody. So Niels, if I can come to you to start off with, when we talk about the downside of it, the fragmented customer data that we tend to see in E Commerce, what does that look like for E commerce merchants in your experience? And what kind of problems can that create for brands if it's not handled properly?

Speaker C: Yeah, that's a question with a lot of answers. I guess we've got tone. I guess the main problem is that you can't offer a cohering customer experience and that uh, starts with data, of course, that customer experience. So yeah, that results into a lot of pieces of the puzzle that are missing. So you might be in our case talking about marketing, automation, communication that could just be about communicating the wrong thing or not taking into account preferences or previously bought products or pages visited on the website. So you're then not using that data to its fullest potential to make sure that you work on that customer experience. So uh, yeah, that's something that a customer will notice like an abandoned cart when you already completed your purchase or being retargeted with the product that you just bought. Like that's stuff that you still see a lot these days.

Speaker A: Okay, and I know this is going to be the majority of what we're talking about here, but just as a high over starting point, what would you say is the most important way that Shopify and Dot Digital integrate to create that single customer view?

Speaker C: Yes, uh, obviously there's a lot of valuable data that sits within Shopify and that's the data that we need access to to make sure that we can present the user of Dot Dish so the marketing teams with actionable insights as we call that. So it's not just about centralizing that data because that's something a lot of platforms can do, but is actually presenting it in a way that marketeers understand how their webshop is performing and they can turn that into actions. And that ranges from things like very simple customer data like your first name, the date of birth, that sort of stuff. But it's also the entire purchase history and is the product catalogs that you may have in Shopify that we take that can then be used to do the product recommendations but also do your predictive analytics and all that beautiful stuff.

Speaker A: Okay, and Gael, from your side, how real time is this data integration between Shopify and platforms like Dot Digital? How do you facilitate making sure that data is in the right place?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think because we have a unified commerce approach. The data is always live, it's always real time. There's no like middleware in the middle. So the data is Transferred directly via APIs at real time and that really gives that ah, leverage of being able to make decisions in real time. We're automating things to happen in real time and not like having to wait to reconcile or have that gap of time where things might change in between

Speaker A: and niels from what digital are working on at the moment. I know personalization comes through quite a lot, but if we're looking at real time personalization and that real next step towards providing the right information for the right customer at the right time for the right reason, surely that kind of SaaS to SaaS connection, that's really important.

Speaker C: Yeah, 100%. It's that real time thing that's important again in every step of the way. So your product recommendations on side and across the multiple channels offered through marketing automation and you sustain sync so that you're again just making sure that customer experience is the same and seamless across your different channels.

Speaker A: Okay, and if a customer's looking to make Shopify the core of their digital stack, as we're discussing here, Yael, can you give me some kind of examples of what customer segments or what customer information they might then have access to using this kind of technology that maybe they couldn't on their legacy platform?

Speaker B: Sure. So firstly, just anything about the customer journey, is it his first purchase? Is this a returning customer? What does this customer buy typically? What are the price points that the products that he buys from which campaigns the customer got into the site? I think we're able to get all that information and pass over and when looking at also Shopify and um, the unified commerce approach and moreover when it's also in person, so if this person has purchased in store, maybe Star Day's purchase online would collect it in store and then purchase some more, you get to have all that overview about the customer and um, leverage that into different types of segments.

Speaker A: So how would that compare to, again, if we're making Shopify the core of this stack, how would that connection between a Shopify and a DOT digital compare to having maybe like a distinct customer data platform as a third element in that?

Speaker B: Yeah. So compared to having a customer data platform that is then again connected to and getting that information from a lot of different systems, it's prone to error, it's prone to shutdowns. Shopify has all the information in real time from all channels, from all engagements, and then is able to just directly send that over to our uh, integrations because there's no middleware there in the middle.

Speaker A: And when we're looking at the reporting capabilities that then allows Niels from your side, the long running integrations that you have with Shopify, what does that allow a marketeer to see for that existing data? What kind of reporting capabilities does that offer?

Speaker C: Sure, yeah. I mean by now there's a lot of reporting that software within the platform and its marketeer is asking for more and more as well. So uh, what we're seeing now is a lot of requests for bespoke reports, which is something that we're working on as well. But by default there is already so much valuable intel. So we start off by giving what we call a retail dashboard, which is a General overview of your performance on the web shop. So that's like your average order value, that's your repeat purchases, how many orders are or how many products are people ordering per time, that sort of stuff. So that's the start. And then you got things like rfm. So using that purchase behavior to look at your audience, look at your database and segment it in a way that you can instantly spot your inactive contacts or inactive customers and your loyal customers. And that can allow you to tailor the approach to those different audiences. So if we're thinking about loyalty programs, maybe start with the champions. So with uh, the most loyal customers, if we're thinking about getting reviews in because we need to work on our user generated content, about social proof, again that's probably something that you want to get your champions and your loyal customers involved with. That's just a couple of examples. And we're seeing more and more predictive analytics coming into play as well. So that allows you to then anticipate on anything that's happening in the future.

Speaker A: And for the uninitiated, in the room of which I'm a proud member, rfm.

Speaker C: Sorry. Yeah, RFM is a standard scoring model used in the commerce world, or maybe more in the marketing and activation space. But it stands for recency, frequency and monetary value. It really looks at purchase behavior in that way. So how recent was your purchase, how frequent are you buying from the brand and then against what value? And then that's a scoring mechanism that puts customers into predefined categories. So we use champions, loyals need nurturing, inactives, and there's probably two other segments that I, uh, will let you off

Speaker A: and I guess from that side of it as well. Yeah, to come back to you, uh, maybe away from, I hate to say just marketing, but just marketing. What other teams do you see getting a benefit from that unified data approach? I guess merchandising or customer service. Is that something that you're seeing an uplift for on Shopify as well?

Speaker B: Yeah, a hundred percent. Especially when it comes to operational teams. We're talking about unified customer data. But something that comes into play here is unified inventory data, which covers a lot of the operational difficulties when you're having fragmented systems. So the ability to not only see this data in real time, but to set workflows that automate a lot of the tasks that are needed to be handled, such as fulfillment, customer service, as you mentioned, always knowing what's happening in one view and being able to help customers with that. So we're seeing a huge uplift there.

Speaker A: And on the earlier end of the spectrum, how are you seeing brands use Shopify and unified customer data to drive acquisition strategies to get more customers in the funnel?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think what unified commerce allows you to do is to serve your customers wherever they like to shop. So. So one thing is retention, right? We want to make sure our loyal customers are even more loyal, but we also want to make sure we capture those who abandoned carts or have been in our store, whether it's online or in person, and be able to elude them back in and make that purchase and become the customer. So things like loyalty programs, gift cards, store credits, things like that, that we're able to bring the customers in, make them go for that first time purchase and make sure that they come is really crucial.

Speaker A: Fantastic. And one more if I can for yourself, Niels, how granular are you able to get on customer behavior or customer data when you have this connection between Shopify and Dot Digital? How detailed can you get on that customer view?

Speaker C: How detailed do you want to get, I guess is the return question that there is a lot of data in there. Honestly, whenever we demo the platform, there's almost a risk of showing a little bit too much. And that's because we combine those data sets, all of the product attributes are taken into account with all the purchases so that he can use that in future retargeting. If we know that you're into navy blue T shirts, that's information that's super simple. That's just one example. But we can use that information in future recommendations, repurchase the programs, any other sort of products that we think fit with that product, et cetera. It gets quite granular.

Speaker A: Yes, just that's an invitation for anyone who's only listening to the audio version of this for why Niels has come up with an idea of navy blue T shirts and you have to see that on the video format. One more question to each of you if I can, just before we wrap up this section and this will keep coming up. Niels, how do you see advances in AI changing how brands should be thinking about their customer data strategy, but particularly around this synergy between Shopify and Dot Digital?

Speaker C: Sure. I think one of the things that we discussed earlier is trends we're seeing in the upcoming years. And I think the main theme that we're seeing amongst customers, which is also why we're here, I guess today to some extent, is efficiency. And I think that's where AI is going to support businesses a lot in upcoming years. So I think as Yoel mentioned or referred to earlier. It's a matter of making sure you embrace AI as soon as you can in your business processes and making sure that you benefit from it, staying a step ahead of your competition by using it in clever ways. Tech providers like ourselves, like Shopify, like Dot Digital, there is a lot of investment in that space. So it is also our job to make sure that we provide features and additions to the platform that can help marketing teams and commerce teams to become more efficient. But that's definitely something that we're seeing and that we're hearing a lot like the need for efficiency.

Speaker A: Okay. And thank you for that. And yeah, same question to yourself. How do you see these advances in AI from your Shopify customers? In particular, how they're looking at customer data strategy?

Speaker B: So again, I think having so much data in one place, it's an AI playground and we're already seeing that. So, uh, Shopify has the Shopify Sidekick. Essentially a merchant can just ask any question they uh, want for the Sidekick, get information about whether it would be the best selling product in a specific location, the best performant customers or campaigns, and make decisions accordingly. And I think making decisions both on the merchant side and the customer side is the biggest play with AI. So if you imagine on the merchant side creating that efficiency, knowing it real time, just prompting a question and getting the insight, and then prompting it to set up something, whether it would be a discount, a promotion or a campaign. And when we look at customers, if it's when needing to search products in specific locations or just in the site, based on things that they've purchased before or based on the already information the customer has, is going to be a game changer in my opinion.

Speaker A: Fantastic. Thank you very much both of you. So that wraps up Part 2. Unify customer data. A single source of truth. We will be back to look at personalization in more detail in the next section.