Capability: Marketing Technology & Architecture

Migrating your customer data infrastructure to Snowflake

Posted on: 12 January 2022
Migrating your customer data infrastructure to Snowflake

Snowflake offers unprecedented power for customer marketing and analytics use cases. Its separation of processing and data storage gives scale and accessibility unlike any other solution. The key benefit for customer marketing and customer use cases is that all data users can work from one up to date source of truth.

Migration to cloud data infrastructure is already on the agenda for many CDOs, CIOs and CMOs. With a potentially large cost for migration, and the risk inherent in moving platform, there are planning decisions to make.

Firstly, there are many different types of cloud migration, and you need to pick which one suits the needs of your business.

Broadly these migration options fall into:

  • Lift and shift cloud migration – exact replica of previous customer platform in a new data cloud for increased resilience and lower cost of ownership
  • Optimise and migrate route – largely replicating a legacy customer database to the cloud but taking the time optimise key components of your data infrastructure to take advantage of Snowflake’s features
  • Migrating through a full rebuild – creating an entirely new data infrastructure within Snowflake to give optimum performance

At CACI we have experience of the pros and cons of each approach and can advise brands on how to get the most from a Snowflake and cloud migration. For instance a full rebuild approach is going to be more timely to complete but will offer greater benefits. In other cases the choice to migrate and optimise will offer huge performance enhancement to critical data needs whilst avoiding the larger budgets.

Regardless of route selected there are key stages in successfully completing a migration of customer data infrastructure to the Snowflake Data Cloud. At CACI we’re helping clients along this journey to minimise risk, accelerate benefits and ensure that the needs of marketing are met:

  1. Legacy audit – all organisations will have a pre-existing set of data sources and integration tools that need to be audited in preparation for migration
  2. Identity and quality assessment – reviewing customer data quality to ensure individuals are clearly identified and that data quality is a priority
  3. Impact preparation – preparing for the impact of migration to Snowflake and communicating this within the organisation
  4. Use case execution – moving to Snowflake will enable greater applications of data and more users having access to data. We help you plan for that to ensure that you reap the benefits
  5. End-to-end planning – when making a change of this scale you need to ensure that all functional and technical processes are covered including reporting using the new data.
  6. Operating model and enablement – ensuring teams across IT, product and marketing are able to fully use the capabilities of the new platform
  7. Benefit assessment – post migration, retrospectively ensuring that the migration has achieved its objectives

To hear more about how CACI migrated the RAC from legacy data infrastructure to the Snowflake Data Cloud, you can watch Ian Ruffle, CRM Capability Manager at RAC, and Jenny Cann of CACI speaking at our recent event.

For more on CACI and Snowflake you can read these blog posts

Adobe Campaign v8 – CACI achieves another first with Adobe

Posted on: 10 December 2021
Adobe Campaign v8 – CACI achieves another first with Adobe

CACI continues to stay at the cutting edge of marketing technology as they achieve an EMEA first for Telegraph Media Group.

Communicating with their subscribers and readers is an important objective for the Telegraph, with a need to stay relevant through fresh content and offers. To continue serving timely and personalised messaging, the Telegraph made the decision to upgrade to Adobe Campaign v8 and to implement Adobe’s Experience Platform.

Adobe Campaign v8 brings high speed performance for complex data selections and ensures that Telegraph are able to reflect the diverse interests of their readers in communications.

As a long-time partner of both Adobe and Telegraph Media Group, CACI were appointed to run the upgrade. Notably this was the first upgrade in EMEA to Campaign v8 and the second globally.

Speaking of the project, Dylan Jacques of Telegraph said “it is great to work with partners who understand our business so well and take a practical approach to delivery. Working with the teams at CACI and Adobe has been a pleasure and enabled us to deliver a complex upgrade.”

With an increasing array of options for marketing technology, CACI remain committed to our mission of assessing the best options for our clients and making value led decisions on what route to take. David Delbridge who leads CACI’s marketing technology practice said “every client situation is different which requires us to look at the use cases a client has and make decisions that deliver the greatest value for minimal effort & cost. Telegraph needed a powerful platform that could handle their complex data and Adobe Campaign V8 was the obvious choice. As longstanding partners of Adobe, we are proud to have implemented the first Adobe Campaign v8 outside of the US!”

Should you want to find out more about CACI’s work with Adobe and the support we can provide in selecting and optimising customer marketing technology, please get in contact.

Discover how we can help you with Adobe

Find out more about how we’re helping leading brands with Adobe in our case studies with Virgin Media, Bupa, and Legal and General.

Why organisations need to start their clean room journey now

Posted on: 22 July 2021
Why organisations need to start their clean room journey now

Following CACI and Snowflake’s recent webinar on everything CMO’s need to know about Data Clean Rooms, Jon Ede shares his notes on why organisations need to start their clean room journey now.

Data Sharing

There is a trend developing in the Data Industry which is focused on the controlled and secure sharing of data between brands and companies. More organisations are waking up to the benefits that sharing data between collaborating organisations can bring, either through improved and enhanced marketing strategy and comms, better insight, or just better co-ordinated and closer collaboration.

There are several reasons why a brand might want to collaborate with other organisations to share data. Closer collaboration through secure sharing of data can:

  • Enhance your understanding of your customer base
  • Enable you to plan and deliver better marketing
  • Perform joint marketing with co-operative brands
  • Assess the prospects of potential JVs

Data sharing allows by creating a frictionless operational process for always on collaboration.

Snowflake’s Data Clean Room

Snowflake have recently launched their Data Clean Room capabilities. The Data Clean Room is a feature that anyone running a Snowflake instance has access to. It allows for seamless and secure sharing of data, meaning that you can share your data with 3rd Party organisations whilst maintaining full control of the data.

Using cryptographic technology, you are able to decide what data you want to expose to your chosen collaborative partner. Using features within the clean room, you can decide to grant access to specific tables, procedures, views or fields.

This allows you to grant access to the data to achieve your use case. For example, you may only want to share data at a specific segment level, rather than at an encrypted individual level. This can then be refined and altered as the use cases develop.

Diagram showing how three brands can come together to create highly relevant messaging

The ability to create this secure environment and share data whilst it is in situ means that the data is immediately actionable. This has historically been a blocker with these types of environments, but with Snowflake’s Clean Room, you can directly integrate the platform into MarTech, AdTech or analytical and reporting tools.

Making it happen

As a Snowflake partner with expertise in MarTech, AdTech and Data Science, CACI is currently working with major brands to guide them on their Data Clean Room journey. We support through Use Case and Strategy planning, all the way through the set up and ongoing execution.

Beginning your Clean Room journey

We help brands by creating standardised and clean data sets, ready for sharing, and then help by creating matching logic to enable better collaboration. At this point our Data Science and Reporting experts are able to work with all data sharing parties to create models and segmentations and analyse the data for insight and collaboration potential.

Using our extensive MarTech and AdTech knowledge we can also help you activate the Clean Room generated insights into new and pre-existing technology.

For more information on Clean Rooms

If you are interested in expanding your data capabilities to include a Clean Room, get in contact with CACI to arrange a call.

Additionally, you can watch the recording of our webinar with Snowflake: Everything CMO’s Need to Know about Data Clean Rooms

Accelerating value realisation with CACI and Braze

Posted on: 6 July 2021

Braze’s recently published 2021 Global Customer Engagement Review is a report worth reading for customer-oriented marketers. Through research and in-depth analysis of customer experience data, Braze has gleaned vital insights into what separates brands that deliver a poor experience with those that excel (Braze titles these the “Ace” brands).

One stat that particularly caught my eye was that Ace brands are 56% more likely to exceed their revenue targets. And this is across all areas of customer activation, conversion, monetization and retention. They are leveraging all the features of Braze’s real-time customer engagement platform to improve the customer’s experience which in turn leads to more customers spending with the brand.

Set out below are the differences between brands delivering legacy customer experiences, and how Braze’s Ace brands are performing. It’s clear that Braze is enabling customer focussed organisations to create experiences and communications that resonate and connect with the recipient.

At CACI we’re helping brands to get the most from Braze. We’re a trusted partner at implementing, optimising, integrating and running Braze for our mutual clients. The work we’re doing with brands who want to be classed as Ace has highlighted five areas where value realisation can be accelerated:

  • High quality implementation of Braze – without this there may be challenges accessing or relying on the data that Braze holds
  • Real-time data integration – to deliver meaningful in the moment experiences, Braze requires fresh data
  • Optimisation not migration – when migrating campaigns from your old platform, take the time to optimise them based on Braze’s capabilities
  • Accelerate personalisation and optimisation – change business practices to enable more continual improvements to your campaigns and comms
  • Have the right model of expert support – whether it’s for creative assets or execution of CRM activity; you need the right type of agency relationship

CACI has now developed a set of Braze Accelerators designed for CRM teams who need to achieve greater results in a reduced timeframe.

If you’d like to find out more about how we could enable your brand to achieve more with Braze, get in touch and I will send you a copy of the presentation on our accelerators.

How Virgin Media successfully met the new End of Contract Notification Regulation

Posted on: 16 June 2021
How Virgin Media successfully met the new End of Contract Notification Regulation

What is EoCN?

The new Ofcom regulation launched 15th February 2020 outlines that customers must be sent an End of Contract Notification 10-40 days before their contract ends. These should include details of the account such as current contract deal and associated offers. The regulation is designed to raise awareness to the customer that they’re out of contract and their price may change.

Our systems didn’t have anything which could produce this, and we hadn’t done this before. We had absolutely nothing in place that could do this, it would be starting from scratch

– Ben Gibson, Senior Campaign Delivery Manager

Creating an End-to-End Solution in Adobe Campaign

Virgin Media requested the support from a dedicated CACI Adobe Campaign Consultant to assist with the creation and the facilitation of the end to end solution. CACI’s Senior Consultant, Fraser Rallison joined the team to support Virgin Media with its EoCN campaign.

Resource and timelines were very very short, and it was a mandatory timeline with a big financial impact if this was missed. We needed someone very good. We needed that confidence that whoever came onboard could run with the project and Fraser’s prior experience was perfect.

– Ben Gibson, Senior Campaign Delivery Manager

Identifying the Most Appropriate Way to Contact Customers

The EoCN approach consisted of passing data through several different data systems. The process began by selecting all eligible customers using Virgin Media’s source billing system. This data is then released to be transformed into a more customer friendly format. Once complete, the customer specific offers are appended, and the data is delivered into Adobe Campaign.

Within Adobe Campaign, 6 individual workflows were created to release over 20 different data files. These workflows ensured that the data coming through was correct and accurate with no missing values which could cause confusion to the customer. The data is also checked to ensure all offers are correct and make sense to the consumer.

Once these steps are complete the data is reviewed to identify the most appropriate way to contact customers. This is identified by reviewing their previous email engagement, quality of email address and whether they require a notification in a special format (such as Audio or Braille).

Once these checks and classifications are complete a bespoke report is built from Adobe and shared with project stakeholders with a request to approve the counts should they match the project plan. Once sign off is agreed the data passes a final two stage quality assurance check before then being released to separate Email and Direct Mail agencies.

A Flexible and Dynamic Approach

The level of granularity within the workflows allowed Virgin Media to better understand the offering provided to customers. The flexible and dynamic approach has also lead to a significant amount of customers communicated to since 15th February 2020 when the regulation came into force. With the support of CACI, Virgin Media have kept within the EoCN regulations and avoid substantial fines.

I seriously don’t think that without CACI and other members of the project team that we would have hit that go live date

– Ben Gibson, Senior Campaign Delivery Manager

Read the full case study

You can view the full PDF of this case study here.

To discover more about how we’re supporting Virgin Media with their customer communications, read our next case study – Enabling Virgin Media to Implement Ofcom’s Annual Best Tariff Notification Regulation.

How Virgin Media successfully met the new Annual Best Tariff Notification Regulation

Posted on:
How Virgin Media successfully met the new Annual Best Tariff Notification Regulation

What is the Annual Best Tariff Notification regulation?

As part of a set of Ofcom regulations launched in February 2020, all customers who are out of contract are to be communicated to on an annual basis from when their contract ended or if they’ve never had a contract. These should include details of the account such as current contract deal, price & services, future premium as well as recommendations for alternative tariffs available based on customer usage and current services.

Implementing the Annual Best Tariff Notification (ABTN)

Following the success of the implementation of End of Contract Notification, Virgin Media approached CACI to assist with the implementation of Annual Best Tariff Notification (ABTN).

The impact of the ABTN regulation was an unknown to Virgin Media. Whilst initial tests had been put in place in 2019, the bulk of these customers were on complex product holdings, predominantly out of contract and disengaged with Virgin Media’s existing communications.

These customers are likely to be paying significantly more than those customers who have re-contracted in the last 18 months. For the business, we had zero idea of the impact, even after testing due to the restrictions we needed to put on the data

– Ben Gibson, Senior Campaign Delivery Manager

Designing a Flexible Solution within Adobe Campaign

Within Adobe Campaign 9 individual workflows were created to deliver the ABTN solution to customers. This involved an initial deep dive into the Virgin Media customer base to identify all eligible customers to be communicated to before the 15th February 2021. Once this was complete, this information was shared with the Virgin Media commercial team to design and map out the best strategy for communicating to these customers which would not only be effective but also ensure the lowest revenue hit would occur.

CACI supported in designing the solution to be flexible, which allowed Virgin Media’s commercial team to adapt to changes in the market and changes to customer behaviour as a result of COVID-19. Evolving tried and tested methods from EoCN, the workflows allowed Virgin Media’s commercial teams to specify which ‘cohorts’ they would like to target for that month and this was then implemented into the solution.

Launching Within Regulation

The project was launched within regulation and is already having an impact in clearing the required customers before the deadline in February 2021. With over three separate runs completed the project was handed over the Virgin Media Insight Operations team to continue the project.

Without CACI the impact of trying to achieve ABTN would have had a significant impact to the business involving taking colleagues off from pre-planned work and cancelling other activity such as sales, cross-sell, retention.

– Ben Gibson, Senior Campaign Delivery Manager

Read the full case study

You can view the PDF of this full case study here.

You can read more about how we’ve been supporting Virgin Media with Adobe Campaign in our additional case study – Enabling Virgin Media to Successfully Meet Ofcom’s End of Contract Notification Regulation.

Enabling Legal and General to become data led, technology enabled and customer experience-focused

Posted on: 15 June 2021
Enabling Legal and General to become data led, technology enabled and customer experience-focused

Legal & General is the UK’s largest provider of individual life assurance products and a top 20 global asset manager. Founded nearly 200 years ago, today the company aims to improve the lives of customers, build a better society for the long term and create value for shareholders through inclusive capitalism.

Data-led, technology enabled, and customer experience focused

James O’Keefe, Commercial Director and Transformation Lead, explains:

Legal & General had set out a clear strategy to drive growth in our direct sales business by being a data led, technology enabled and customer experience-focused digital business. It sounds a simple approach, but we had unique challenges to tackle in our disparate legacy systems and data. The post-GDPR landscape is a critical context too: like all responsible organisations, we’re committed to being compliant, but we’re also looking ahead to the future of global digital privacy.

Relevant and Useful Customer Journeys

James says “We needed a foundation of lawful and accessible first-party data that we could enrich with third-party data to provide meaningful customer insight at a sub-segment and attribute level. This would inform and enable customer and prospect engagement.”

Legal & General had already selected Adobe Campaign Standard for marketing campaign execution. James explains: “In any transformation programme, it’s worth looking for quick ways to deliver value early on, to prove the ROI and demonstrate results. We had a gap in our tech stack that Adobe Campaign filled. CACI worked with us to join data sources, create clean and enriched datasets and to launch the platform. It was an important proof point that delivered good campaign results, gaining buy in and further commitment from stakeholders as well as investment from sponsors.”

With the CACI Demographic Data API, Legal & General is getting even more value from their Acorn and Ocean datasets and CACI-built custom segmentation.

Using this real-time connection, CACI provides Legal & General with Ocean characteristics in real time, such as wealth, age and attitudes, to match with prospects and customers in a privacy safe and compliant manner. This means they can be assigned a best-fit persona and served the most relevant and useful customer journey immediately. It also informs and refreshes Legal & General’s models, for personalised customer experiences.

Leaving behind a one-size-fits all approach, for a segmented and customised conversion journey

CACI’s Ocean consumer data enriches Legal & General’s first-party data, giving a clearer picture of preferences, behaviours and motivations. The team can prioritise marketing spending and campaigns to make the biggest business impact. Legal & General customers and prospects now receive marketing communications that feel relevant to their life stage and priorities.

James says: The results are excellent. We have market-leading campaign deliverability rates. Compared to our legacy system, we have doubled open rates, trebled click-through rates and greatly improved the open-to-sale ratio. The big difference is that we’ve left behind our previous one-size-fits-all approach, replacing it with a far more segmented and customised conversion journey. We have multiple representations of customers and we’re able to optimise continually by balancing the commercial benefits against the cost and complexity of running more campaigns. We have transparency so we can see exactly what drives value. We can understand precisely how we’re influencing customer outcomes and adjust the approach to meet our business goals.

It’s testament to CACI’s breadth of skills that we were able to look to you for guidance and support in every aspect of the customer experience strategy and deployment. I call it your ‘bench strength’ – CACI’s consistent knowledge and capability across the board. There’s great account leadership: when we need to be connected to expertise in different parts of CACI you get us in front of the right person.

You can download a PDF copy of this case study here. If you’d like to discuss your consumer data or data science needs with our team of experts, please get in touch.

Transforming Bupa’s customer journeys

Posted on: 14 June 2021
Transforming Bupa’s customer journeys

Bupa was created in 1947 in the UK with the founding purpose to prevent, relieve and cure sickness and ill-health of every kind. The company is driven by a passion to provide high quality, affordable healthcare. Today, Bupa is an international healthcare company, providing health insurance, treatment in clinics, dental centres, hospitals and care homes.

The Challenge

Richard Glassborow is the Direct Distribution and Marketing Director for Bupa UK Insurance. He explains:

“Our challenge was no less than a marketing transformation. When I met with CACI a few months after taking up this role, I was looking for ways to transform our people, technology and data capabilities.

“Transforming our customer journeys was my top priority. We have a big customer base with many different journeys, from finding customers, bringing them into the funnel for conversion, on-boarding, renewing, retention and off-boarding, as well as managing claims. Customer expectations for personalised engagement are very high: they’re set by technology-led organisations like Amazon. In healthcare, we needed to raise our game.

The Solution

The end goal was to give Richard and his team a roadmap to transform customer journeys, alongside an assessment of current data and technology gaps.

Bupa had some challenges with lead conversion and retention, partly due to a lack of personalisation in their communications. For the transformation roadmap, CACI built a suite of private medical insurance (PMI) customer journeys for different life stages, then converted those into contact strategies which could be developed and activated through Bupa’s Adobe technology platform. They were designed to be engaging, timely and relevant.

CACI looked at the technology and data dependencies in context of Bupa’s existing and future resources, identifying the changes needed to give Bupa the customer experience capability it wanted. CACI’s consultants produced a recommended strategic solution to transform data and technology by upgrading Bupa’s IT architecture.

The Benefits

Richard Glassborow is very pleased with the report and recommendations made by CACI. “This work has created clarity instead of ambiguity. It has given us momentum and given our senior team the assurance to take the next step. The tactical steps we’ve identified are key to breaking down barriers to change: we now have a credible plan to address them, so everyone is confident that the transformation is feasible.”

CACI is a preferred partner to Bupa for technology and implementation. The teams are working together on several strategic projects, including the single customer view, marketing distribution technology, and this infrastructure solution.

Team CACI understands the tech, the data silos, the infrastructure, our operational ways of working and what’s realistically possible in the timeframes we have. Using their knowledge and intelligence, they have pieced together a strong and coherent roadmap and action plan for improved customer experience that will measurably uplift our KPIs. Because they understand us and the issues we face as an organisation, they are by our side as trusted advisors and partners.

Find out more about how we’re supporting Bupa with their customer marketing strategy in the full case study here.