Martech Interview with Tamara Gruzbarg, VP of Strategic Services at ActionIQ

As customer experience spurs to be the next competitive battleground, the approach should eventually change for new revenue opportunities. The interview throws light on trends and predictions about CX and CDP in the year 2022.

CDPs becoming a true cross-functional collaboration tool, breaking down silos within the organizations in addition to the silos between customer-facing channels

1. Could you tell us more about your role at ActionIQ?
Transforming Customer Experience (CX) with customer data is a formidable task, requiring a set of strategic capabilities in addition to the right technology. As a VP of Strategic Services at ActionIQ I support our clients on this transformation journey with data-driven CX roadmap development, customer intelligence enablement, and operational model and value assurance consulting.

2. Lately, ActionIQ was named a Strong Performer in Forrester’s report. What do you have to say about that?
We are proud to be recognized as a Strong Performer in the B2B CDP New Wave report* by Forrester. B2B customer journeys are evolving to look and feel more like consumer experiences – increasingly digital-first and occurring across a growing number of channels. These B2B organizations therefore hit many of the same complexity and scale challenges that we see with our enterprise B2C clients. ActionIQ was built to address the scale of enterprise brands serving millions of customers. So we’re the solution of choice for B2B companies with high-scale operations, and those that need to support both B2B and B2C customer experiences. The recognition from Forrester is testament to that, as is our growing roster of B2B customers.

*”The Forrester New WaveTM: B2B Standalone CDPs, Q4 2021″ report.

3. What are the best steps to measure data strategy maturity in 2022?
With the deprecation of third-party cookies looming, it is more critical than ever for a brand to evaluate its current first-party data capabilities and have a forward-looking plan. Brands, advertisers and marketers should be asking themselves:
1) Current state assessment on data and technology: What types of first-party customer data do I collect right now – transactional, profile, behavioral, loyalty, customer service logs, etc? Do I have the ability to unify these data sources and recognize a customer across the different touchpoints?
2) Data and consent collection: What mechanisms are in place to expand the customer recognition in a trusted, privacy-compliant way? What are my strategies around getting consent, encouraging authentication and explaining the value I provide to my customers in exchange for information? Have I considered partnerships, clean rooms, etc, and do they make sense for my business model?
3) Organizational readiness: Are we prepared organizationally to take advantage of the first party data to drive CX? Is there an alignment and understanding at the executive level on the levers of value created from first party data utilization? Do you have the right talent and operational model to test, learn and execute at scale?

4. According to you, what are the top 3 analytics predictions for this year & beyond?
– Continuous changes in the environment will push a wider acceptance of test & learn framework: you cannot assume that the strategies that you set up early in the year will keep working, so you need to be ready to test, learn and adapt in real time in a scalable way
– Flexible ML/AI tools utilizing wide variety of customer data sources continue rising in importance, as you can no longer rely on a set of business rules from limited data sets: be ready to take a new information into account to create truly relevant experiences
– Personalization will depend more and more on a value exchange with the customer for her data. As new types of data are being created through this exchange, get ready to incorporate them into your intelligence tools

5. How can brands build a connection between hybrid remote teams and customers?
Brands should have a full view of their customers, from their affinities for different products to their preferences for different channels. When access to these data and insights is democratized across the organization, brands can deliver truly personalized, impactful customer interactions in any type of hybrid work environment. Flexible work arrangements are here to stay, so it is imperative for brands to have the capabilities to operate in a distributed, but well-governed fashion. At ActionIQ, we work with many brands who are empowering their hybrid employees to use our CDP to give hybrid customers what they want.

6. What do you think is the future of CX?
CX for the most part has fallen under the purview of Marketers, and while Marketing plays a large part in delivering the customer experience, operations can no longer be siloed. From a customer perspective, whichever channel they’re interacting with, the martech stack should facilitate a seamless, personalized experience to them, which means organizations will need to adopt an agile approach to facilitate cross-functional alignment and scale a personalized customer experience. The right technology will unlock new revenue opportunities, drive more efficiencies and create more customer value.

7. How should marketers orchestrate cross-channel digital campaigns?
There are five key items when it comes to orchestrating cross-channel digital campaigns:
– Recognize a customer irrespective of the channel (email, on the site, in store, customer service interaction, etc)
– Take into account all of the profile characteristics and signals across the channels to define targeted segments for activation and engagement
– Orchestrate a holistic journey across the channels based on understanding customers’ affinities and preferences
– Take into account feedback signals during the journey to provide relevant subsequent experiences
– Continuously test, learn and optimize

8. What will be the trending CDP predictions for 2022?
– In an environment where everything is or quickly becoming first-party data, CDPs will continue picking up and expanding on the use cases traditionally handled by DMPs
– CDPs enabling more sophisticated and impactful real-time use cases through combination of in-the moment behavioral signals and rich historical profile data
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CDPs becoming a true cross-functional collaboration tool, breaking down silos within the organizations in addition to the silos between customer-facing channels

9. ActionIQ won Built In’s best places to work 2022 award- what’s the best part about your culture?
The ActionIQ culture is open and transparent, dedicated and fun. We are an amazing, diverse team whose interests are as varied as our backgrounds. We work hard – solving complex marketing challenges for our customers in a dynamic, collaborative, and exciting work environment. And we play hard together to keep things fun.

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