Consumers today prefer not only the best prices, but also the best experience. Personalisation is what separates the big players from the rest of the market. However, it is always a challenge for companies to understand customer behaviour, preferences and needs in order to deliver a memorable and personalised experience.

According to McKinsey analysts, companies that lead in customer experience achieve more than double the revenue growth of "laggards". Companies that use data analytics earn 40% more than those that do not.

Data warehouses lead to missed opportunities

Without the ability to access consumer insights such as purchase history, online behaviour, store visits and personal preferences, marketers are limited in their understanding of their customers. This makes it difficult to optimise marketing strategies to increase sales.

While most marketers have the ability to collect analytical data about customers at various stages of their path to purchase, the process of collecting, managing and analysing large amounts of information requires expensive infrastructure solutions and complex data integration processes. As a result, companies are missing opportunities and experiencing unsatisfactory customer experiences.

Use customer activity data

Bloomreach Engagement is an all-in-one marketing platform that uses data analytics and artificial intelligence to automate marketing processes and deliver personalised and relevant content. It combines data-driven personalisation, content optimisation and real-time recommendations to focus on individual consumers and provide them with a high-quality digital experience.

A key element of the platform is the Customer Data Engine (CDE). This component is responsible for collecting and managing the customer information that is essential for generating analytical data. The CDE enables marketers to connect their own data sources, existing data tanks and warehouses, and any existing customer data management systems (CDPs). This provides a single view of the customer and enables real-time personalisation.

The Engagement platform comes with a personal real-time data warehouse. However, for those who wish to use the data collected in Engagement outside of this platform and store it in a broader data analytics stack, there is Engagement BigQuery (EBQ). The BigQuery platform is hosted and managed by Bloomreach, creating a complete data warehouse that is already populated with the full set of data collected through the Engagement platform. This gives you access to the power of Google's BigQuery platform and ecosystem to analyse and use this data in a deeper way.

Helps marketers transform the customer experience

• POS terminals or loyalty programmes, allows companies to combine customer data into a single customer profile. This integration enables companies to collect and store information from multiple sources to create a comprehensive and unified picture of each customer.
• Marketing analytics is a tool that provides a single, authoritative source of information to make data-driven decisions and drive business growth.
• Cloud infrastructure allows organisations to avoid the need to invest in their own data infrastructure and the costs of maintaining it, resulting in cost savings.
• Efficient data processing and analysis enables organisations to quickly gain insight from large volumes of data, reducing the time it takes to draw conclusions.

Marketers who use Bloomreach's capabilities see numerous benefits, including increased conversion rates, customer lifetime value (CLTV), effective customer acquisition, reduced time to value, data integration, increased profitability and cost savings through reduced media spend.

Many Bloomreach users use EBQ to export data. The main benefit is the ability to access the data in their Business Intelligence (BI) tools, which are structured in a similar way to Bloomreach Engagement. The next step is to integrate it with other data sources and create a single source of information for the whole organisation. This will simplify access to Bloomreach data across the organisation, allowing everyone to access high-level reports and data to inform day-to-day business decisions. The impact is felt beyond the marketing department as key business metrics such as average order size, return rates, customer churn and others become useful to other departments such as customer service, logistics, sales and operations.

Google's hyper-personalised customer experience

By combining Bloomreach Engagement and BigQuery, Google is delivering a hyper-personalised customer experience based on cloud technologies. This includes the integration of BigQuery into the Bloomreach Engagement environment, expanding the possibilities for personalisation and marketing automation.

Bloomreach EBQ provides data synchronisation and processing through the Bloomreach Engagement platform. This synchronisation takes place using a dedicated instance of the BigQuery secure and analytical data warehouse. Importantly, this warehouse is fully managed by the Bloomreach team for each individual client.

EBQ provides data scientists and analytics professionals with convenient access to their user data and the full power of the BigQuery platform. This access includes BigQuery ML's built-in machine learning capabilities. This in turn enables analysts to gain a deeper understanding of consumer behaviour, preferences and interaction patterns.

As a result, marketers can develop business decisions and strategies based on customer insights. These solutions can be activated and implemented through the Bloomreach Engagement platform. This approach allows you to effectively use data to improve business processes and make informed strategic decisions.

Together, Bloomreach Engagement and BigQuery help organisations make the most of their customer data and gain insights that improve the customer experience and increase revenue.

BigQuery for Service Providers and Data Centres

Through the Built with BigQuery initiative, Google is helping companies like Bloomreach build innovative applications on the Google Data Cloud with simplified access to technology, helpful and dedicated technical support, and collaborative go-to-market programmes. Participating companies can:

Google will help companies like Bloomreach build innovative cloud applications using Google Cloud technologies. This support includes simplified access to technology, helpful and dedicated technical support, and joint go-to-market programmes through the Built with BigQuery initiative.

Opportunities for companies participating in the programmes

1. Accelerate product architecture with the ability to consult with experts who can provide critical insight into key use cases, architectural patterns and best practices.
2. Increase efficiency through collaborative marketing initiatives to build awareness and create demand.

BigQuery is a powerful data warehousing system that benefits independent software vendors (ISVs). It is integrated with the secure and reliable Google Cloud Platform. In addition, with an extensive partner ecosystem and support for multi-cloud tools and open source APIs, Google offers technology companies flexibility and scalability to avoid data lock-in.