Unifying User Data

In this week's episode of the Small Tech Podcast by Éphémère Creative, we delve into the world of unifying user data across various touchpoints in your tech ecosystem. We discuss the importance of customer data platforms (CDPs) such as Segment, Rudderstack, Freshpaint.io, and Jitsu, highlighting their benefits in streamlining data flow and ensuring consistency. Learn how funneling data through a single platform can optimize communication, automation, and understanding user interactions, ultimately leading to a more efficient and user-focused product experience. Don't miss out on these essential tips and tools for handling user data effectively and enhancing the overall success of your tech startup.

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Creators & Guests

Host

Raphaël Titsworth-Morin

Trying to do good in the world with tech and design. I also take the occasional photograph. Co-founder of Éphémère Creative. He/him.

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Hey folks.

And welcome to the latest episode of the
small tech podcast by Ephemere Creative.

I'm your host Raph and today we're going
to be talking about unifying user data.

So before we start, what
do I mean by user data.

That might mean counting the number of
pages that someone views on a website,

or it could mean the number of screens
or which screens they visit in an app.

It could also mean the things
that they do within an app.

So if they submit a form or they
interact with some elements or whether

it's an app or a website really.

Or it can be something
else tied to a feature.

So if someone submitted some audio and
it gets processed in the background

and that finishes, you might want to
track that somewhere so that you can

send the user an email about that.

And so being able to control how
all of that data flows and make

sure that it's all well coordinated
is what we're talking about today.

How can you unify that data?

It's coming from a lot of
different places, right?

You might want to figure out
how someone moves from a landing

page to your marketing site,
maybe through, to a pricing page.

And then they start using your app
on the web, and then eventually

they install the mobile app and
they start interacting with that.

And you need to know how they are
interacting with your ecosystem

of technology across all of
these different touch points.

And you need to know that to send
the messages or maybe it's to make

sure that you understand how people
come into your app and interact with

it so you can improve your product.

It can be so many different things.

It can also be for customer support
to make sure that they have a full

context of what someone's doing
so that they can support them.

There's so many reasons.

So to cover that you'll need
some way to funnel data from

all of those touch points.

You could build something custom where
you submit a request to a server that

you've built out just for this purpose.

That takes something like a
user ID and an event name, and

some metadata about that event.

And keep that all in a database yourself,
but you lose out on a lot of potential

functionality if you build it yourself.

You could also build that functionality.

If you have deep pockets
that might make sense.

For most of us in this small tech context.

It does not make sense.

That is a lot of stuff to build out.

I would recommend using a platform.

I think they generally call themselves
CDPs customer data platforms.

Something along those lines.

I am most familiar with
one called a segment.com.

It's pretty neat.

You can install.

A variety of sources.

So you can say that I'm going to funnel
data from my API, from my web app, from

my marketing site landing pages, you
can even integrate with other platforms.

So you can say I'm going to funnel
data from Stripe or MailChimp and

pass that all through Segment.

And so it funnels into Segment
and then you tell it where

you want to spit it out to.

I think one thing that every
project should do is have

some sort of data warehouse.

If you're really tiny app, you
can just run a simple database.

Segment will allow you to funnel
all of that data into snowflake

or Redshift and others um.

PostgreSQL is nice and easy if you're
a small company, small product.

If you're a bigger company, bigger
product, you can use the other ones.

But that will give you a nice
place to take a look at all

of your data from one place.

Basically the idea is that you take all
of the information from those different

sources and you funnel them through
one tool where you can manage the data.

You can apply transformations.

You can say actually, I don't
want to send this type of data.

So if it does come through, stop it here.

And then you funnel that
into your data warehouse

And also into other tools.

And I think this is where it
can become really powerful.

The data warehouse is really practical
because it gives you a place to

ask questions about how people
are interacting with your product.

You can say.

I need to know how people interacted with
something in a marketing context and how

they transitioned into a user context.

And.

I don't know, graph out
that, that relationship.

But.

While that is really valuable.

I think it becomes particularly
valuable when you move that into

tools that are really built to
understand those flows and act on them.

You can hook into other platforms
like Intercom, for example, or

one of my favorites, Customer.io.

And from there you can say if someone did
go from being an active user to being an

inactive user, perhaps we want to wait
a few days then we want to send them an

email to ask them what went wrong with the
platform or why they haven't been around.

And gather feedback.

That sort of thing is really valuable.

And you can also use these platforms to
submit more transactional style emails.

So with the example I used earlier
about the audio processing.

You want to let someone know
that's complete, you could do

that from within your app's code.

But then you might lose some of
the styling and branding that

all of your design and marketing
team has been working on so hard.

You may also want to use many of
these tools and knowing that your

data is going to be consistent across
all of them, because you've used a

platform like Segment to do that.

Is going to be really beneficial.

You'll know that everyone
is on the same page.

About what data goes, where when, why.

Yeah, I recommend using a Segment.com.

There are others that I've looked into
that I think look really interesting.

One that I came across recently
is called fresh paint.io.

It looks really neat.

It looks quite friendly
to non-technical users.

So you won't need a developer to integrate
the signals that you want to track.

I think they actually let you use
their tools to just point on a

webpage and say, I want to track when
someone clicks this thing or clicks

that thing or submits this form.

So that's really neat.

I find that the promise of that
kind of tooling often falls short.

I do believe they have a way for
developers to integrate with code and

properly submit exactly what's going on.

So that's good.

You can do both.

As I understand it the other
two that I came across recently,

are Rudderstack and Jitsu.

Jitsu looks a lot more immature.

They don't have a lot of integrations,
but they are really pushing that

they are an open source solution.

Rudder stack also seems to be open
source, but isn't pushing it very hard.

So I don't know.

Sometimes when I see an open
source product, Not pushing the

fact that they're open source.

It makes me wonder if they're
rethinking their open source

philosophy that may not be the case.

It looks pretty awesome.

They have a lot of integrations.

And yeah, it looks pretty cool.

So I personally would gravitate towards
Segment or Rudderstack at the moment.

But I think one way or another,
these are all tools worth exploring.

If you are not familiar with them.

So that is all for this episode.

Let me know what you thought.

How do you unify your customer data?

Do you use any of these tools?

How do you use them for automation,
communication and understanding how

people are interacting with your products?

I would love to know if you want
to talk to me about it on the

podcast, you can shoot me an email
at [e-mail].

Make sure to like, and subscribe
on the YouTubes or subscribe

in your podcast app of choice.

And we all want to do
some good in the world.

So go out and build something.

Good friends.

See ya.