Customer data platform has transformed wealth campaigns and delivers precise client targeting
What is our primary use case?
The major use case that we do here is designing the entire customer data platform on ActionIQ Platform. As part of an investment bank, we have multiple products to offer to our clients. The different kinds of products that we have to offer to clients are designed out in ActionIQ Platform based on the different eligibility criteria of the client. As per the eligibility criteria, participants get picked into one or other products according to the design condition that we create and different models on ActionIQ Platform.
The eligibility criteria that we set up in ActionIQ Platform is more like a drop-down feature that we have in ActionIQ Platform. If an international indicator of a participant is yes, that means they are resident to the US or some other country. These all kinds of fields would be there. If a participant's stocks are getting vested in the next 30 days, these all eligibility criteria we set on ActionIQ Platform. Then the age bracket of the participant, we set it on ActionIQ Platform. Then for specific companies to which these participants are belonging, those all conditions we also set up. Then on the wealth criteria, if a participant is falling under a wealth criteria of 100k to 200k dollars or more than 200k dollars, these all wealth brackets are also being set up on ActionIQ Platform. The data that we use basically comes from the Hadoop and Snowflake, where we take this big data from our upstream sources. Then we use it in ActionIQ Platform to design our customer data platform.
What is most valuable?
ActionIQ Platform has been a very helpful tool in designing our entire customer data platform in our wealth management domain, which has been really helpful to segregate the participants according to their eligibility and it has worked very efficiently to target out the participants according to the perfect use case.
The best feature that ActionIQ Platform provides is it is able to handle a very large amount of data. It comes handy with the big data tools such as Snowflake and Databricks. These provide a very handy feature to handle a very large amount of data. At the same time, the second best feature is creating out the rules and the eligibility criteria for the participant. It works very efficiently to target the participant according to the eligibility criteria that we set and which helps us a lot in the reconciliation process. That is all that I found very valuable with ActionIQ Platform.
What needs improvement?
One feature that I can think of is that apart from the batch mode where the data gets refreshed on ActionIQ Platform, if we could get that done on a real-time basis, it would be more helpful given whatever data needs to be processed.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using ActionIQ Platform for more than three years and I am majorly using it for the customer data platform modeling on the wealth management business of Morgan Stanley.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
ActionIQ Platform is very much stable and along with that, we also get a dedicated tech team to help us in challenging situations.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I did not find much challenges in scaling up and down with ActionIQ Platform. It was very much helpful in handling the amount of data. To be more precise, almost 1 TB of data it was able to handle, so we did not find many challenges with ActionIQ Platform on the scalability part.
How are customer service and support?
The customer support team of ActionIQ Platform was very much helpful. They used to connect with us on a weekly and bi-weekly basis with all the queries and doubts that we had along the platform or setting up the infra. Anywhere we had any queries, they were very much proactively helping us in this scenario, which did not make it feel challenging for us and we could deliver the deliverables on time.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Previously, everything was running on the big data side, the Salesforce marketing team was doing the marketing and the back end was from the Hadoop. It was not that effective given the customer data platform, how easily we could create on ActionIQ Platform was missing on the Hadoop platform.
How was the initial setup?
Initially, when we set up, there were initial challenges, but the in-house ActionIQ Platform tech team was also very much helpful. Whenever there were some blockers or some issues, they used to come in handy and then they would walk through the platform, whether it be with the connections or whether it be with any reconciliation issues. All those gaps that we found initially were being completely resolved by the in-house ActionIQ Platform tech team. So we did not find much challenges and it was very much handy for us to work around with ActionIQ Platform in the coming days.
What was our ROI?
After using ActionIQ Platform, it was able to record all the targeting that we do to the end client and it used to give us a very exact number of what was the feedback. When we integrated it with Salesforce, we were able to achieve a very good feedback on how the end participant responded to the campaigns for which we were targeting them. We found that from the traditional marketing campaigns which we used to drive earlier, after using ActionIQ Platform, there has been a very great boost to the business. Around the campaigns were successful to a point of 98 to 99%.
We measure this metric by looking into the feedback that we get from the Salesforce team. From all the participants that we send out the marketing campaigns, we look into the metrics of how many participants have responded back positively. Then what was the gaps between communication and all, we try finding it out. We have integrated our ActionIQ Platform with SFMC for our email-based targeting. We have used ActionIQ Platform for ad-based campaigns as well. From all this feedback, whatever we get from the downstream are also consumed into ActionIQ Platform as a feed file, which helps us look into the metrics of the number of participants whom we targeted and the feedback file that we receive. 98 to 99% of these participants we got feedback, whatever be their decision on the final product that we offered to them.
As for the business metrics we got in our monthly report, ActionIQ Platform really helped us save our time and then on the resource as well. From the manual process of marketing campaigns which used to run earlier, ActionIQ Platform helped us by reducing 80% of the effort, and as mentioned, the accuracy of the campaigns increased to 98 to 99%.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
This was something which POCs were done by the infra team and I did not have much insight into this aspect of it. ActionIQ Platform on all of the front was a clear winner. That is the reason the infra team went ahead with ActionIQ Platform.
What other advice do I have?
ActionIQ Platform gives a holistic solution. If you are looking to build a customer data platform or dealing with a very large amount of data to build out the different marketing campaigns, it comes in as a very handy tool.
We work very closely with ActionIQ Platform as a partner.
I felt all good in my experience with ActionIQ Platform. I would rate this review a 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Great partnership, transparent roadmap, accessible leadership.
What do you like best about the product?
The entire org is very transparent, and collaborative, and leadership is accessible to our team for guidance & to understand the "art of the possible". SMEs are easily accessible through our account team when we need their insights, both as a reactive ask from our team, and as proactive recommendation from the account team.
What do you dislike about the product?
Wouldn't say "like least" but with new features that we implemented, some more growing pains on both sides as we figure out how to implement, but collaborative approach to the solution.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Enabling orchestration across channels, identity resolution, onsite 1:1 personalization, democratizing capabilities through evolving operating model.
So Easy To Use and Implement!
What do you like best about the product?
I love how easy it is to push audiences into engines such as Google Ads. Creating audiences and pushing is a breeze and takes no time to do!
What do you dislike about the product?
I would love to see more tips and tricks pages to understand how to best use ActionIQ.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I am looking to understand what audiences index highly with current customers of my business for refined targeting in Google's Display and YouTube network.
Recommendations to others considering the product:
N/A
Great Omni-Channel Tool, great for segmentation, automation and Journeys
What do you like best about the product?
ActionIQ has helped us create our audiences with a simple, intuitive UI. The tool is user-friendly, and even a non-technical person can quickly build variables. The ActionIQ Team is very accommodating; they are always open to suggestions and are very responsive to any issues we bring to their attention.
What do you dislike about the product?
Reporting is a bit limited; they are working on adding this functionality and are open to feedback.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Our company has multiple data sources and touchpoints; we needed a platform to consolidate this data to have a holistic view. With ActionIQ's person-match technology, we can merge numerous records for customers into a single one to market to and draw actionable insight. Another significant win is Omni-channel marketing and targeting, which is made easy from this platform.
New to Audience Building
What do you like best about the product?
I like that it is user-friendly for people like me, who are new to building audiences.
What do you dislike about the product?
It can take a long time to run counts sometimes, especially around 3-4 PM when all of our journeys are running.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We can run multi-channel campaigns out of ActionIQ and use contact and response history for future touchpoints.
Great for audience segmentation, automation, and exploration. Excellent customer service.
What do you like best about the product?
ActionIQ has helped us reduce strain on our analytics team by allowing our marketers to create their own audiences with a simple, intuitive UI. We began using the platform in 2019 and have increased our usage every quarter not only with more marketing teams, but also with more advanced features and variables. ActionIQ has proven more than capable of handling our customer journeys, personalization, and advanced segmentation. Their support team is world-class and genuinely care for our business and align themselves with our company and team goals. Their engineers are constantly at work to improve their already-excellent platform which gives us things to look forward to each quarter.
What do you dislike about the product?
Reporting is a bit limited, however they are aware of this and are honest and up front about it. They are working on improving reporting and dashboarding and are considerate of feedback.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We've achieved several unique problems with ActionIQ including but not limited to:
1. Automatically target new registrants, existing/active users, and lapsed users through journeys
2. Join many tables in one interface to segment and target users, such as content, engagement, and feature usage
3. Quickly measure overlap between audiences and view variable distributions within audiences
4. Reach users through various paid and/or organic channels through both custom campaigns and journeys
AIQ is simple and effective!
What do you like best about the product?
AIQ makes it easy to create audiences by making the variables / columns understandable, and in a non-SQL manner, which is super helpful for many non-technical marketers. Also, having access to AIQ Journeys has allowed for our tests to maintain success via automations.
What do you dislike about the product?
On occasion, the platform can move quite slowly. I've noticed this occurs mostly when opening the platform for the first time, or when I'm looking to copy an audience.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We are solving the issue of having automated campaigns run on a regular basis because of AIQ's Journeys. This has allowed us to run tests that make a large impact to the business, and then ultimately automate the test winner, resulting in sustained performance from the target audience.
User-friendly CDP with an amazing team to support your initiatives!
What do you like best about the product?
The platform itself is very intuitive and there is thorough documentation to assist with onboarding and onwards.
Every member of the ActionIQ team is continually looking to help improve the platform by taking in all feedback from our conversations. They have even set up user feedback sessions from power-users as they share new functionality and iterate. Also, their expertise is greatly appreciated when reviewing initiatives and architecture for the roadmap.
What do you dislike about the product?
There really haven't been any down-sides as any issues were a by-product of internal miscommunications on our (client) side.
The only area that could perhaps be beneficial is enhanced SQL capabilities for the variable builds to reduce the need for continuously updating the feeds. For instance the ability to order/prioritize records and such for specific use-cases could be useful.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
The ability to identify customers in order to action on their behavior and deliver consistent messaging as many customers have different touchpoints with our brands. One of the benefits, or side-effects, is that it is helping push to have clear business rules. The ability to have a more centralized and automated delivery to various platforms has most certainly been a benefit as it has allowed business units to have increased bandwidth and more reliability in the segments being pushed across channels.
Powerful tool
What do you like best about the product?
As a marketer, I can build my own segments and trigger them without relying on IT to build everything.
What do you dislike about the product?
We didn't setup a very intuitive way to save all of our segments, and changing now seems like a monumental task.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We are working toward a single view of our customer, but the business still needs to improve our own internal data. It's not there yet.
Powerful and Felxible CDP with Potential to Improve
What do you like best about the product?
Customizable to your company's tech stack and data requirements from an initial integration perspective, but also from an audience and segmentation perspective. You can connect multiple sources of data, a variety of other tools and leverage the powerful features (i.e. person-match) in your day-to-day within the tool and outside of the tool.
What do you dislike about the product?
There are opportunities to improve the platform, while AIQ understands CDP's are not one-size-fits-all, having ready-made templates for audiences or basic reporting would take the tool to the next level. This would also alleviate some of the heavy lifting the client-side teams need to do in terms of creating audiences, variables or reporting dashboards from scratch. Being a flexible tool that is open to customization while overwhelmingly advantageous, also has disadvantages in the fact that it requires the necessary headcount and technical experience to implement properly.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
A main use-case for CDP's is resolving multiple versions of customer profiles in a given database. AIQ has made resolving multiple accounts within our database easy through their person-match feature. Their person-match technology consolidates multiple versions of the same profile into a master AIQ profile. Through this, you can track their exposure to various omnichannel campaigns. This is also simplified through their regularly scheduled contact history export.
