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Hey folks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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it's an app or a website really.

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Or it can be something
else tied to a feature.

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

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

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send the user an email about that.

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

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

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How can you unify that data?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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of technology across all of
these different touch points.

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

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

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it so you can improve your product.

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It can be so many different things.

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

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

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There's so many reasons.

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

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all of those touch points.

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

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you've built out just for this purpose.

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

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some metadata about that event.

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

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functionality if you build it yourself.

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You could also build that functionality.

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If you have deep pockets
that might make sense.

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For most of us in this small tech context.

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It does not make sense.

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That is a lot of stuff to build out.

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I would recommend using a platform.

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I think they generally call themselves
CDPs customer data platforms.

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Something along those lines.

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

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It's pretty neat.

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You can install.

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A variety of sources.

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

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

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

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pass that all through Segment.

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

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you want to spit it out to.

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I think one thing that every
project should do is have

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some sort of data warehouse.

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

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

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or Redshift and others um.

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

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

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

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of your data from one place.

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

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

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You can apply transformations.

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

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So if it does come through, stop it here.

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And then you funnel that
into your data warehouse

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And also into other tools.

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

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

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ask questions about how people
are interacting with your product.

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You can say.

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

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they transitioned into a user context.

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And.

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

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But.

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While that is really valuable.

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I think it becomes particularly
valuable when you move that into

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

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

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one of my favorites, Customer.io.

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

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

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

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And gather feedback.

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That sort of thing is really valuable.

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

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

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

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that from within your app's code.

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

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

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

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

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platform like Segment to do that.

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Is going to be really beneficial.

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

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About what data goes, where when, why.

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Yeah, I recommend using a Segment.com.

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

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

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It looks really neat.

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It looks quite friendly
to non-technical users.

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

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

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

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that thing or submits this form.

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So that's really neat.

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

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

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properly submit exactly what's going on.

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So that's good.

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You can do both.

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

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are Rudderstack and Jitsu.

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Jitsu looks a lot more immature.

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

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they are an open source solution.

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

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So I don't know.

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

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fact that they're open source.

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

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philosophy that may not be the case.

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It looks pretty awesome.

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They have a lot of integrations.

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And yeah, it looks pretty cool.

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

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

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If you are not familiar with them.

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So that is all for this episode.

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Let me know what you thought.

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How do you unify your customer data?

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Do you use any of these tools?

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

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people are interacting with your products?

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

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podcast, you can shoot me an email
at raphael@ephemerecreative.ca.

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

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in your podcast app of choice.

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

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So go out and build something.

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Good friends.

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See ya.