This chapter covers
- How a data lakehouse unifies structured, unstructured, and semi-structured marketing data
- Why composable CDPs serve as a real-time activation layer for targeted campaigns
- How the medallion architecture (bronze, silver, gold) refines data for analytics and personalization
- A practical roadmap for modernizing your marketing data stack, with an eye on realistic constraints, costs, and risks
Data silos are the enemy of effective marketing.
—Chris O’Neill, CEO of GrowthLoop, Board Member of Gap, and marketing influencer
Data is at the heart of every marketing strategy. Yet with customers interacting across so many channels—websites, social platforms, email campaigns, call centers, and customer relationship management (CRM) systems—your teams might feel like they’re trying to piece together a puzzle with missing pieces. Each platform, department, or vendor solution offers only a narrow slice of the data needed to fully understand customer behavior.
At the same time, today’s marketing leaders are under pressure to prove ROI more quickly and deliver highly personalized campaigns at scale. You need real-time insights and the flexibility to pivot fast, whether you’re retargeting abandoned carts or launching AI-powered recommendations.
That’s where two converging trends are transforming marketing data management: