Unboxing The Marketing Data Warehouse

The Guest

Deven Ravel is a revenue-focused partnerships professional with SaaS ecosystem experience in low-code integration, customer data, and enterprise martech. Prior to his current role as Head of Channel Partnerships at Hightouch, Deven scaled business development and sales for a variety of different clients, he also served as a United States Marine Corps infantry officer leading humanitarian and combat operations in Afghanistan, and he’s here today to help us unpack the world of data warehousing.

The Interview

The interview with Deven starts with a basic definition of data warehousing, as it pertains to marketing, and how this critical aspect of data management has evolved over time.

“There is some confusion between a database, data warehouse, and data lakes,” begins Deven, “A data warehouse is meant for analytical transactions in which users are aiming to get insights from a dataset.” 

Deven explains that some of the confusion with data warehousing is vertical-specific.

“For example, manufacturing and financial services have been slower to adopt cloud technology, whereas businesses with on-premise data functionality have been dealing with warehousing for much longer.”

The conversation pivots to discussing some of the data management challenges and limitations agencies face, and ways to overcome them.

“Especially in the martech and adtech space, data management has historically been a siloed area,” says Deven. “Enterprise data lives separate from marketing data which is cordoned off from sales data. Data quality is also a barrier. In the last five years we’ve seen a proliferation of customer data platforms, and this has ended up creating a ton of duplicate data, which can present issues. Another challenge is data discrepancy; agencies don’t know where they need to go to get data. Modern cloud data warehouses allow orgs to centralize data, while certain levels of control help them democratize the data.”

Deven then goes on to describe key features to look for in a marketing data warehousing solution, and the increasing importance of composability in a data stack.

“While an all-in-one data management tool is nice,” says Deven, “Frankenstacks might be inescapable in certain areas. This is where composability helps, meaning, all of your data lives in one, well-governed place, and there are tools built around the stack with pipelines to support it.”

We then pull out a crystal ball, and Deven talks about his vision of the future of data management and how data can be positioned as a revenue-center, rather than just a cost-center.

“Data management and the role of data teams are going to become enmeshed with marketing and advertising,” explains Deven. “Marketing teams are leading the charge in larger orgs for better data management. My spidey-sense is saying it will be transformational. We have examples of clients that have transformed their data management processes from a cost-center to a revenue-center. The data coming out of your org is telling a story about your business and your customers; why don’t you use these data models to power activities and campaigns down the channel? With better data, you can ask better questions which can lead to better campaigns and better performance.”

For stories about cloud data warehouses, mythical data wands, battles against dirty data, and Deven’s thoughts about AI in adtech’s future, listen to the full interview by clicking the links above and below. 

The Links

Hightouch
Deven on LinkedIn

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