How Tealium’s CDP Is Helping Organisations Turn Data Challenges Into Opportunities

The world is changing for businesses at an alarming rate with the deprecation of third-party cookies expected next year and upcoming changes to the Privacy Act.

The best organisations will find ways to stay atop the changes but ensuring these privacy-first ways of working are enacted in every function can seem fool’s errand at best and illusory at worst. Fortunately, Tealium’s customer data platform (CDP) is available to businesses that want to be privacy leaders, rather than laggards.

At an exclusive event held at the Glasshouse in Melbourne, Tealium invited a select group to learn how they can get set up for success with a CDP and discuss the challenges facing modern businesses.

Signal Losses & Gaining Consumer Trust

The event kicked off with a keynote from Kieran Smith, Tealium’s director of solutions consulting ANZ, giving attendees advice on dealing with signal loss. In an engaging chat, he demonstrated the challenges facing organisations as the major tech companies move towards a privacy-first and cookie-less future.

Smith showed that as changes to consumer privacy come into effect, the old ways of identifying online audiences will change.

“Businesses have been reliant on third-party cookies. Without these, they need a new way to find their own customers and they need their first-party data to do that. What’s happened in the industry is that the tech platforms have created and developed new technologies to collect your first-party data – both client-side pixels and server-side APIs – so that you can continue to spend and make money from their platforms,” he explained.

Collecting all of these signals can be a challenge and as consumers are increasingly basing their choice of companies on how their data is used, getting your data ducks in a row is essential. Smith advised that establishing a data centre of excellence was imperative for businesses to stay at the top of their field.

In fact, of the organisations that Tealium works with – and there are a lot including the likes of Bupa, L’Oreal, Woolworths NZ and REA Group – those that have a strategic view of the customer data operations can work smarter thanks to their deeper customer understanding and maintain their consumers’ trust. These centres of excellence ensure that there are no inconsistencies within the customer experience and that everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet in the way that customer data is collected, stored and deployed.

Smith compared the problem that many organisations without a centre of data excellence face to kids’ sports teams. They may have one or two incredible players doing fantastic work but, without a team-level strategy and a collective understanding, the whole unit is weaker.

Diving Deep With REA Group

One Tealium customer making the most of its CDP is REA Group. Following the keynote Drew Pearse, REA Group’s executive manager – CX platforms and Ishita Nautiyal, audience & personalisation analyst, took to the stage for a fireside chat. The pair were joined by Ben Kennedy, a strategic account director at Tealium.

“[REA Group] do some really impressive work with us. So much so that our global visitors often comment on how mature they are within the space,” said Kennedy.

Nautiyal and Pearse explained to the crowd how REA Group focused on providing a great customer experience with its data use – a fact made all the more challenging as they are a multi-brand company.

“We have a centre of excellence piece at REA Group where everything is centralised within our team. We’re a multi-brand organisation, we want users to have a consistent experience across sites and domains. To be able to deliver that consistently, we have that cross-pollination and teamwork happening,” explained Nautiyal.

The pair explained how having Tealium’s CDP allowed REA Group to harmonise all of its operations and ensure that it had a privacy-first mindset in all of its customer interactions. All of the data flows within the organisation are managed via the CDP and the centre of excellence team.

“Privacy will be one of the biggest challenges for Australian businesses within the next decade and, if you’re not on it now, it’s going to be tough,” said Pearse.

“If you’re a business and you operate multiple brands, you’re going to have a tougher job than your peers and that’s why my recommendation is that you should start now in getting your operations aligned”.

Following the fireside chat, the attendees broke off into three smaller sessions focusing on the biggest issues facing modern digital businesses from the privacy-profitability paradox to ensuring genuine real-time interactions.

These sessions offered the chance to explore exactly how Tealium’s CDP can help businesses get ahead of the curve and turn the data challenge into an unprecedented opportunity for growth.