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Leveraging Data as a Competitive Advantage with Airbyte’s Michel Tricot
High-growth companies have more data than ever before. Their challenge is to properly manage, integrate, and organize complex data sets. That’s where Airbyte comes in.
An open-source data integration, Airbyte collects and moves data seamlessly. The Tydo team sat down with Airbyte CEO Michel Tricot to chat about data fragmentation, Airbyte’s core value prop, and how data stacks can be leveraged into a clear competitive advantage.
Data Fragmentation & Hypergrowth
As new companies reach hypergrowth and SaaS products emerge from stealth mode, fragmented data is a common and urgent problem. The majority of early-stage companies struggle to maintain a complete view of all their datasets and integrate these assets.
Airbyte is tackling this exact issue.
The challenge with data stacks is that every company has different needs and collects various types of information. Using Airbyte, companies can quickly pull data from various platforms (Shopify, Facebook, etc) and centralize it in one place where every team member can easily access it.
In turn, data engineers can extract clear insights, segment users for user feedback, and directly improve the business. With this 360 degree lens, companies can better target their customers. As a result, visibility and improved data calibration drives clear competitive advantages.
“Most high-growth companies have a seemingly endless array of data silos. It’s nearly impossible for a team to break them all down in tandem. That’s why they need Airbyte and our 360 degree view.”
Portability, Accuracy, and Security
Airbyte’s core value proposition is centered around three factors: portability, accuracy, and security.
Portability, or the ability to easily retrieve data, comes first. That's because accuracy only comes into play once data is readily available.
After a business uses Airbyte to import data, the question then shifts into the accuracy of their ported data. As it relates to accuracy, Airbyte maintains strict rules around how their team manages schema changes and how they ensure assets are valid.
The final piece is security, which boils down to data warehouses paired with the intelligence Airbyte builds on top of their own pipes. Tricot points out that the Airbyte team focuses a ton of time and energy on ensuring that data can safely move from any source to the final warehouse.
“Ultimately, with Airbyte, we want to give people improved access to data.”
Airbyte’s Open-Source Model
Airbyte’s platform can be used across nearly all company verticals.
For example, they work with ecommerce companies to pull data from Shopify, Google Analytics, and ad accounts. In tandem, they also partner with fintech and healthtech companies, who have much stricter requirements around what they can do with data sets.
Their open-source model performs extremely well across all verticals because each company can customize the code to guarantee that no one else but them has access to their data.
Additionally, it’s easy to install Airbyte into existing code architecture, which enables companies to maintain control of their own data. While Airbyte focuses on helping companies port in data, teams are freed up to focus their time on making smarter, more strategic growth decisions.
In the future, Airbyte wants to leverage its open-source platform to help companies with data movements and provide intelligence so that they don’t see data movement as an urgent issue.
“Data integration is a problem at every single company. Full stop. It’s not just an ecommerce, fintech, or healthtech concern. It affects everyone.”
Use Case: Solving for Attribution
For emerging brands looking to improve portability and security, Tricot points out that the first step is to clearly define a goal before diving into the data. Companies need to ask themselves what kinds of problem they’re trying to solve for instead of pulling data for the sake of pulling data.
Attribution is a huge problem for brands. In Tricot's words, it’s practically unsolvable.
However, ecommerce merchants can at least start to understand where they should invest their marketing budget by leveraging data. They can look at how people behave based on traffic from various channels. Each channel is a silo of data, and that data can be inform business decisions.
When brands properly centralize their data, they can drive more powerful attribution. Plus, commerce teams can even build out multi-touch models using Airbyte, which can help them better understand where customers are coming from and more precisely attribute revenue.
“With a 360 degree view of your customer, you can do things that are more personalized and drive a better ROI on any campaign through any channel.”
Leveraging Data as a Superpower
Once data is readily available, the challenge is to keep everyone in the loop while centralizing and controlling data flows. More and more consumers are aware of privacy requirements and regulations, and companies need to enforce those rules both internally and externally.
When data is handled the right way, according to Tricot, it can become a superpower.
In the increasingly crowded realm of analytics platforms that yield data-driven insights, Airbyte serves as both a tool and a connector. At its core, Airbyte’s platform adds a connectivity layer. Thus, companies can use it to power their product while also connecting their customer data.
“When you see that your competitor is growing faster because their team is smarter with data, you need to rapidly hire people who can use data even better and even smarter. If you don’t do that, you’re going to fall behind.”
What to pledge- How to improve
- Which tools will set you up for success
Resolution
I think the most important thing brands can do in 2023 is to better manage their customer data—both ethically and effectively. There’s an opportunity for brands to know their customers better than ever before—a clear benefit for both the customer and the brand. When you manage your data correctly, you’ll create stronger and more personalized ads, creative, site experiences, and so much more.
Tip
This is a classic: Let the data guide you. Go where the buyers for your products are and communicate with them on a personal level (i.e. by persona and funnel position) and nurture those relationships (past, present, and future customers). It’s possible—all through data.
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Resolution
We recommend that Shopify brands analyze and update their websites using data-driven decisions. Using analytics tools such as heatmaps and scrollmaps can help brands better understand how customers are interacting with their store.
Tip
Store owners tend to make assumptions about the way customers interact with their website. Most never go back and analyze their design choices to find pain points or areas of opportunity. By using heatmaps and scrollmaps, they can see where real customers are clicking and concentrating their attention. Leveraging this data, brands can start to iterate on design and make their online store experience streamlined and intuitive.
Tool
Hotjar provides a simple way to implement heatmaps, scrollmaps, and recorded user sessions on your site, helping you acquire incredibly informative user data. Additionally, it gives you the ability to create on-site surveys, which allows you to obtain direct and often critical feedback from users about their experience.
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Resolution
Test various attribution models and analyze the impact on your business. At Fifty Six, we are always here to help our clients identify and optimize their approach—a critical step in any successful marketing strategy.
Tip
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times–Customer Lifetime Value. And even more importantly, Future Lifetime Value (FLTV). With the ever-growing importance of first-party data, it is crucial that brands take a good look at their CRM and FLTV metrics.
Tool
OrderlyEmails is our go-to tool for transactional emails. It helps us level up our brands’ email aesthetics with customizable, quick-to-implement Shopify templates.
Lately, I’ve been really interested in Smile.io’s loyalty platform. Their UX is fantastic for teams with low bandwidth!
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Resolution
Stop allocating budgets to low-hanging fruit that doesn’t move the needle on conversion. Think about what’s really going to improve your CX and the return of undertaking different initiatives—not just on what’s top on your list of bugbears on the site!
Tip
One of the best ways to understand your customer behavior is by using HotJar. Their heat-mapping and screen recording tools shine a light on where customers are navigating to and from on your site, where they're rage clicking and experiencing frustration, and where conversion is dropping off within real life customer journeys and flows!
Understanding your customers’ pain points via data and analytics , will allow you to work with your CRO/CX Agency to solve customer frustrations and improve conversion.
Tool
Rewind backs up all product, customer, and order data for Shopify sites—essential since Shopify itself doesn’t provide this solution. It's saved so many of our clients time and money from administrative accidents.
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Resolution
33% of customer service inquiries are pre-sale questions. What does this mean? If you’re not investing in customer service, you’re missing out on revenue-generating opportunities.
Tip
The benefits of elevating your customer experience:
- 10% to 25% increase in AOV for customers who engage with live chat pre-purchase
- 21x higher conversion rate for customers who reach out via Live Chat or SMS compared to other site visitors
- 87% of customers who have a great customer experience will make another purchase
- 72% of customers share positive experiences with 6 or more individuals
Tool
Gorgias is our favorite Helpdesk platform. They can reduce costs by 35%, primarily by decreasing the average ticket handle time. Their machine learning algorithms are trained on millions of ecommerce-related interactions across Gorgias’ customer base and provide accurate, automated replies for the most common ecommerce inquiries. This helps our agents resolve tickets faster, which provides the customer a seamless experience.
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Resolution
Trust your agency! Agencies do the same things across multiple brands and niches, so we see the trends and have the practice and experience!
Tip
Don't be afraid of data and insights. If customers aren't clicking on your emails, try a new CTA. If your ads are driving good metrics at a small spend, start scaling. If your customers are complaining about a product, look into QA! If the data tells you something isn't working, let it go and try something else!
Tool
I'm supposed to say Tydo, right? 😉
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Resolution
Double down on differentiation. There will be a lot of headwinds this year and standing out from the crowd will set you apart.
Tip
A picture is worth 1,000 words. A video? Probably millions. In ecommerce that value translates into engagement, acquisition, and retention—everything you need to impact your bottom line.
At soona, we've seen the we've seen the impact of creative and the continuous split testing of it yield results. Our resolution is to challenge ourselves and double down on innovation and creative optionality so that each brand we work with can distinguish themselves in a crowded sea of D2C ecomm. We'd love to see our brands share this resolution and keep pushing the creative limits.
Tool
Klaviyo. We're using it to power our email and newsletter at soona too!
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Resolution
Optimize your returns strategy! This can lead to valuable customer insights, enhanced user experiences, and increased revenue and customer loyalty.
Tip
Brands need to dive deeper into understanding their customers to set themselves up for success. Conduct research to gain insights into customer needs, preferences, and behaviors. By doing so, you can develop targeted strategies that will enhance customer experience and boost overall retention.
Tool
Right now I would say Gorgias. Having a good customer service tool is crucial to building strong customer relationships.
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Resolution
Start paying heavy attention to data, specifically around retention. We see a lot of effort put towards acquisition with the assumption that once someone buys, they are your customer forever. Instead, get to know your customer, understand their needs, and analyze their behaviors once they are on-site and judge their sentiment after they have visited. Work with a retention focused and data-driven agency to implement tools that contribute to repeat business and customer delight. It will pay dividends.
Tip
When surveyed, about 80% of ecommerce merchants think that they are delivering a great experience to their customers. However, when the same customers are surveyed, only 8% of those customers think that they are getting a great experience from the merchant. Now, more than ever, retaining loyal customers is an essential part of any online business and you should spend time with your customers to judge their experience with your website and products and offer improvements based on that feedback.
Tool
Tydo's report cards are an essential tool, along with Klaviyo for email and SMS, Recharge for subscriptions and memberships, Okendo for reviews and surveys, Rebuy for AI driven collections and upsells, Loop for self service returns... each tool is great on their own, but their strength as the ultimate tool comes from when they are used together!
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Report Cards
Report Cards is a customized glimpse into your business, delivered to your inbox for free.
Report Cards consolidates all your key metrics across platforms for an at-a-glance pulse of your business.
Discover metrics for every team member so they can stay updated with the right data on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.
It's free because we believe everyone should have access to the basics.
Portfolio
Portfolio is a hub for analytics across multiple Shopify stores. The perfect tool for agencies.
See an aggregate view of all your data for all your stores in one place.
Make real time assessments on marketing initiatives across every storefront you manage.
Analyze the performance of one store versus another in seconds.
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