Running shoes, bad feet, & personalized customer experiences: Why this CEO is excited about Snowflake's Marketing Data Cloud

I love running, but I have bad feet.

As CEO of Simon Data and with two young kids at home, things can get very busy.

When things get crazy, running is my outlet. Walk out the door, turn left, run two blocks, and then two laps around Prospect Park. Forty minutes and five miles later, I’m done. Exhausted yet recharged, my exercise for the day is complete.

But… I have bad feet, and when it comes time to buy running shoes, I can’t just buy any running shoes. 

There used to be a store in my neighborhood called JackRabbit that specialized in just this. When you walked into JackRabbit, the place looked like any other shoe store — lots of shoes on the walls and apparel and accessories on racks around the place.

What set JackRabbit apart was the customer experience. When you walked in, you were greeted by someone who had expertise in their inventory and the curiosity to understand what you were looking for. Some people came to train for the NYC marathon. Others came for soccer cleats for their kids. I came to find the right running shoes — for my bad feet.

“Which kinds of shoes have you owned in the past?”

“Where and how long do you typically run?”

“What’s your stretching routine, and what other sports do you play?”

After five minutes of conversation, the rep actually understood the problems I was trying to solve. Patiently, they would help me find the right shoes, socks, and accessories for my bad feet. 

Six months later when I needed a new pair of shoes, I’d find myself back at JackRabbit. Not because of their prices or its location, but because every time I’d have a conversation with the rep there, and pick up where I last left off. They understood me as a customer, they knew what I was interested in, and what problems I was trying to solve. This was what kept me coming back.

Experiences like this are what led us to start Simon Data. We saw a massive divide between the highly personal 1:1 experiences at places like JackRabbit, as opposed to the seemingly cold but efficient nature of ecommerce, and a broader set of brands struggling to digitize their customer experience.

Looking across this divide, we saw a gap that didn’t need to exist. Instead, we saw an opportunity for digital businesses to transform the customer experiences that their offline counterparts could only dream about.

This opportunity starts with a new wave of data investments that brands of all sizes are making. 

How can Bark leverage data on your dog’s breed, location, weight, and favorite chew toys to make recommendations about dog dental care products?

How can 1-800-Flowers leverage data on gifts you’ve purchased for your mother, wife, and friends across their dozens of brands to help you find the perfect gift for all the mothers in your family this year?

How can Zillow leverage data across homes you’ve viewed, mortgage products you’ve read about, and agents you’ve contacted to help you find your dream home?

The potential for digitally enabled multi-channel brands to leverage data is endless. And our mission from day one at Simon is one of driving this next-generation of use cases.

Martech’s tumultuous evolution over the past ten years

Simon’s trajectory as a business has mostly been at odds with how the rest of the MarTech category has progressed.

Our thesis around data enablement comes with a POV that marketing can’t win this game alone. Marketing success starts with data investments, and data-savvy brands have invested in data centrally. 

At Simon, our playbook is about building on top of these enterprise data investments and providing the application tier that unlocks these investments to drive next-generation customer experiences.

When we say “Simon can unlock your Customer 360,” we mean that you have all the data you need sitting within the four walls of your business today. It’s about eliminating data silos and greatly reducing the friction required for effective collaboration. This is the central thesis behind our Composable architecture.

When others in MarTech say they can unlock your Customer 360, 99% of the time the focus is on a rip-and-replace motion — requiring a rebuild from scratch and a complete reset of data strategies.

The best and clearest example is Salesforce’s recent rebranding of its CDP as “The Salesforce Data Cloud.” With this latest branding exercise, Salesforce now requires customers to house and maintain their data in Salesforce’s Data Cloud to enable marketing outcomes in their Marketing Cloud.

Salesforce isn’t alone in this camp of “vertically integrated data applications.” The gravity within MarTech to “own the data” is both pervasive across so many vendors and hugely problematic. Adobe, Oracle, and even Segment (which is launching what’s ostensibly a “Composable” app under the name “data link”) have all made massive pushes to fully own this data layer.

The rise of Snowflake and composability

MarTech has officially cannibalized itself around data ownership, and the market has figured out that an effective customer data strategy can’t exist as a subcomponent of one or more marketing tools.

Today, Snowflake has emerged as the clear winner among Cloud Data Platforms — and has taken a huge step forward in defining a real ecosystem around application partners that exist to unlock a broad set of next-generation applications.

In his last Salesforce earnings call, Benioff spoke about data that’s “trapped” in data systems across the enterprise, and posed the question, “Put your hand up if you’re using Snowflake every day [to drive business and marketing outcomes].” Benioff then uses this as a focal point to tout Salesforce’s new “Data Cloud” offering.

This year, Snowflake didn’t launch its new marketing cloud. Instead, Snowflake launched a new ecosystem that will enable brands to fully leverage their Snowflake data investments.

The benefits are clear:

• Centralized governance and control. With regard to privacy, consumers expect more today than ever, and this is mirrored by regulatory changes with GDPR, CCPA, and more. If customer data is striped across a half dozen or more MarTech applications, it’s impossible to manage consent, appropriately handle data erasures, or securely manage sensitive customer data. 
• A common data layer. Your analytics tool should work alongside your BI tools which should work alongside CDP and attribution applications. Having a single source of truth with a set of applications that draw centrally from a common set of tables is critical to enable not just workflow continuity, but customer experience continuity as well.
• Unlocking the power of enterprise data and tools. How would your marketing strategy transform with 100 times more data and access to a next-generation of AI & tools to support this?

We’ve been part of the Snowflake journey for a while, and we’re thrilled to see our partnership and vision come alive.

Simon Data: Our take on today and the future of enterprise marketing

While Snowflake’s MDC launch is a big deal for the category, in many ways, it’s just another day for us at Simon. We’ve been hard at work building toward the vision I outlined above for years now.

Earlier this year, I sat down with David Wells, Industry Principal at Snowflake, and Scott Grove, VP of Marketing Operations at Vimeo, to talk about some of the joint work we’re doing together. We covered a range of topics around how we enable Vimeo to leverage their Snowflake investments, including automating workflows by reducing and eliminating the need for complex ETL, and also detailing a case study where Vimeo leveraged Simon and Snowflake to drive an increase of 300% in trial conversions.

So where’s all this heading — and where are we leaning in at Simon?

The beauty of the MDC is it’s not about building everything. It’s about focusing on what we can do best and what part we can play in this much larger ecosystem of MarTech use cases. It’s not about what any one vendor can do individually, but what can happen when it all works together.

The future for us at Simon is to drive that last mile of data enablement: high-leverage use cases that drive incremental ROI and LTV. Use cases that unlock a next-generation of personalization. Use cases that sit on the backs of massive enterprise data investments, starting with Snowflake but ending with a world of technology enabled by LLMs and AI.

A few of the ideas we have in mind?

• Automating workflows: “Build a dream homes email based on recent search activity.”
• Optimizing content: “Identify anyone who might be in the market to buy new running shoes in the next 60 days, and compose a compelling message based on their historical preferences.”
• “Audience of one” targeting: Everything from ad bidding optimization to audience targeting to paid media content
• And plenty more!

We're excited to be part of the journey when it comes to delivering 1:1 personalized customer experiences. In case you missed the Snowflake Marketing Data Cloud Launch, check out the video here.
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