Building marketing campaigns from customer relationship data

Summary

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Podcast Summary: "Building Marketing Campaigns from Customer Relationship Data"

Podcast: Voices of Search
Host: Jordan Cooney
Guest: Eddie Patch, VP of Revenue at Optimove
Date: September 1, 2025

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Overview

This episode explores how businesses can turn their underutilized customer relationship data into high-performing, revenue-driving marketing campaigns. Host Jordan Cooney and guest Eddie Patch discuss the escalating significance of first-party and zero-party data, AI-powered personalization, and the challenges of integrating customer data into actual marketing operations. The conversation is loaded with actionable strategies and real-world examples, particularly for organizations keen to future-proof their SEO and content marketing through deeper, data-driven customer engagement.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Evolving Value of Customer Data

[00:43–05:15]

• Data Goes Unused: Most companies collect customer relationship data, but much of it sits unused, leading to a lack of personalization and stagnant conversion rates.
• Shift to First-Party Data: The marketing landscape is moving away from commoditized third-party data toward the higher accuracy and value of first-party and zero-party data.
• Quote:

  “According to a 2024 Acquia CX Trends report, 93% of marketers believe collecting first-party data is more critical than ever for an organization.”
  —Jordan Cooney [00:48]

2. Eddie Patch’s Data-Driven Career Journey

[02:03–04:07]

• From Groupon to Optimove: Eddie has worked across several software companies with data at their core, transitioning from search and content analytics to first-party customer data solutions at Optimove.
• AI in Content Marketing: Early adopter of AI-driven content experiences, now expanding into comprehensive customer-led marketing.

3. Why First-Party and Zero-Party Data Matter

[05:15–08:56]

• Commoditization of Third-Party Data: First-party data now holds the greatest value due to its exclusivity and precision.
• Behavioral and Lifecycle Depth: First-party data offers unique insights into individual behaviors and lifecycle stages, critical for nuanced marketing.
• Quote:

  “With first-party data you could have a higher reliance on [accuracy]… you’re not getting the behavioral signals and the preferences of an individual from third-party data.”
  —Eddie Patch [05:32]

4. The Role of AI in Leveraging Customer Data

[08:10–10:02]

• Personalization at Scale: AI enables analysis and action at the individual and cohort levels—across email, website, and omnichannel experiences.
• Sophisticated Personalization: Leading brands like Sephora and Fanduel use AI to track and personalize customer journeys beyond just single interactions.
• Quote:

  “Now we’re truly at this real single marketing view… it’s legit, it’s real interesting.”
  —Eddie Patch [08:47]

5. How Zero-Party Data Transforms Personalization

[10:02–13:19]

• Zero-Party Data Defined: Data customers intentionally share, such as preferences via interactive experiences (e.g., swiping games to reveal vacation biases).
• Cross-Channel Consistency: Using this data ensures personalized experiences across mobile, desktop, and in-person touchpoints.
• Quote:

  “Not only does [zero-party data] access more personalization, but it gives you… cross-channel consistency. So, the experience… is going to be the same now because we tailor it to you.”
  —Eddie Patch [11:12]

6. Connecting Zero-Party Data to LLMs and Search

[13:19–15:16]

• LLMs as Zero-Party Data Engines: Conversational search interfaces (like ChatGPT or Perplexity) collect nuanced, session-based zero-party data.
• Gap in Marketer Mindset: Most marketers haven't yet integrated zero-party data into their SEO and content campaigns.
• Quote:

  “We don’t actually think about, at least in my opinion, search marketers aren’t actually thinking about this as zero-party data.”
  —Jordan Cooney [15:08]

7. Operationalizing Data: Real-World Implementations

[15:16–19:25]

• From Data to Action: Zero and first-party data are stitched together (often in data warehouses) for hyper-personalized multichannel campaigns.
• Data-Driven Triggers: Examples include credit card companies preemptively enabling travel based on purchase patterns.
• Challenges Remain: True end-to-end stitching across all customer channels and teams remains complex.

8. Organizational and Technical Barriers

[19:25–23:11]

• Siloed Teams and System Fragmentation: Multiple customer touchpoints (loyalty, POS, web sign-ups) create fragmented profiles and limit unified marketing.
• Center of Excellence: Top-performing companies elevate cross-functional data integration to a C-suite initiative, sometimes establishing special teams with unique tech stacks.
• Quote:

  “The ones that do it well have acknowledged it at the C-suite level…they create almost like a center of excellence… they sit on top of everything.”
  —Eddie Patch [22:30]

9. AI as an Orchestration and Measurement Tool

[23:11–29:39]

• AI in Campaign Prioritization: AI can decide which communications customers receive and their order, scaling personalized engagement.
• Deterministic vs. Probabilistic Matching: Marketers use both explicit (deterministic) and inferred (probabilistic) signals to try to segment users more accurately (e.g., distinguishing personal from business travel).
• Revenue Attribution: Modern platforms are closing the loop — tying engagement directly to revenue, not just vanity metrics like open rates.
• Quote:

  “Now I could say, we did a test and control and we noticed that the 80% that you sent it to… had a lift in incremental revenue.”
  —Eddie Patch [29:13]

10. Actionable Advice for Marketers

[30:30–32:21]

• Collect More Zero-Party Data: Use gamification, kiosks, and interactive experiences to enrich profiles.
• Integrate Data Across Channels: Sync with CRM and use segments for personalized SEO-rich content and website experiences.
• Embrace AI Beyond Content Creation: Leverage AI for campaign segmentation, prioritization, and optimization, moving beyond basic content automation.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Most businesses collect extensive customer data. Few use it in effective marketing. Even fewer connect it to revenue outcomes.” —Jordan Cooney [00:49]

• “First-party data is only reserved for the ones that are doing well in acquiring and actually building their first-party dataset.” —Eddie Patch [05:29]

• “With the access to introducing that data, now the entire journey is being personalized.” —Eddie Patch [10:44]

• On organizational barriers:

  “Each of those [IDs] represents a different team… Every channel is being separated. When you get up into the Fortune 500, the ones that do it well have acknowledged it at the C-suite level.”
  —Eddie Patch [21:43]

• On AI practicality:

  “There’s a lot of low hanging fruit… After that, they begin to trust AI to tell them what priority and exclusion should be happening…”
  —Eddie Patch [24:27]

• On moving past vanity metrics:

  “We could start to say that campaign you ran translated in X amount of dollars… I think we’re getting closer to a better ROI story rather than just like a fluffy metric.”
  —Eddie Patch [29:03]

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Practical Steps for Marketers

[31:06–32:21]

• Use gamification and in-store tech to collect zero-party data.
• Sync zero/first-party data with CRM for full website and content personalization.
• Rely on AI for optimization and operational improvements, not just content generation.

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Key Timestamps

• [00:43] — Framing the first-party data challenge
• [05:15] — Value hierarchy: third, second, first, zero-party data
• [08:10] — AI-driven personalization and single marketing view
• [10:33] — Zero-party data and interactive personalization
• [13:19] — LLMs and session-based zero-party data in discovery
• [19:25] — Data stitching across organizational silos
• [23:11] — How AI can prioritize and scale customer communications
• [29:39] — Engagement and direct revenue attribution
• [31:06] — Action plan: zero-party data, CRM integration, AI for optimization

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Conclusion

This episode offers a comprehensive look at the future of marketing campaigns rooted in customer relationship data—highlighting the transition from generalized third-party data to actionable, AI-driven insights gleaned from first—and increasingly—zero-party sources. For marketers aiming to drive real results from their data, the message is clear: double down on customer data collection, break down organizational silos, and trust AI not only for content, but for orchestration and measurement across every channel.

Transcript

[Eddie Patch]

The Voices of Search Podcast is a proud member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast.

[Sponsor/Advertisement Voice]

I Hear Everything delivers podcast production, growth and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice?

[Eddie Patch]

Then visit iheareverything.com welcome to the Voices of Search Podcast. A member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network, ready to expedite your company's organic growth efforts.

[Sponsor/Advertisement Voice]

Sit back, relax and get ready for.

[Eddie Patch]

Your daily dose of search engine optimization wisdom. Here's today's host of the Voices of Search Podcast, Jordan Cooney.

[Jordan Cooney]

Customer data sits unused in most company systems. Marketing campaigns lack personalization. Conversion rates remain stagnant. Your competitors gain market share. How can you transform relationship data into revenue driving marketing campaigns? According to a 2024 Acquia CX Trends report, 93% of marketers believe collecting first party data is more critical than ever for an organization. This underscores the growing importance of leveraging direct customer insights to fuel effective marketing strategies. Here's the challenge. Most businesses collect extensive customer data. Few use it in effective marketing. Even fewer connect it to revenue outcomes. How can you bridge the gap between data collection and campaign execution? This is the Voice of Search Podcast. I'm Jordan Cooney and joining us today is Eddie Patch, VP of Revenue at Optimove, which helps brands deliver personalized customer experience at scale. Today, Eddie will share how to transform relationship data into high performing marketing campaigns that drive measurable results. Eddie, welcome to the Voice to Search Podcast.

[Eddie Patch]

Thanks Jordan. Thanks for having me.

[Jordan Cooney]

Eddie, you and I go way back and it's always fun to have friends on the pod, so I'm super thrilled to have you here. We started our careers together at Search Metrics, helping to build what was search and content data. Right? Helping companies scale search and content data in their marketing experience. And you've since moved on to have a very successful career in a variety of different organizations. Maybe share a little bit with our listeners what that path has looked like and how you've been involved in the data journey across marketing, sales, customer experience data and where you're at now with Optimove.

[Eddie Patch]

Yeah, for sure. For sure. Anytime I get an excuse to see you and talk to you again, I'm there for it.

[Jordan Cooney]

Thank you.

[Eddie Patch]

So happy to be here. Yeah, My journey has been primarily working at a variety of different software vendors or software companies. I've spent time at starting a Groupon and then moved into some location data and then had the chance of meeting you at Search Metrics and then interestingly enough, the Search metrics days. If you remember, we kind of, we had launched the first AI content experience at the time.

[Jordan Cooney]

Yeah.

[Eddie Patch]

And it's been really, it's been pretty fascinating to see where things have gotten since then. But in my, in my career I've always had a, there's always been a data element to any company that I joined, whether it was third party data in Martech to where I am today at optimove. I joined Optimove because I, I was watching the, the buzz and the hype around the deprecation of third party cookies and I wanted to find a company that was truly taking first party data and figuring out ways that they could expand on it and do more with it. And Optimove really just fit the bill when it came to leveraging your first party data and the customer led marketing in terms of their kind of their slogan and their approach. So yeah, I've been with the company for about a year and a half now.

[Jordan Cooney]

Awesome. Very cool. And I think you're right. I mean there's been so much changing in the data space both from what companies can collect regulation changes over the past couple years. And I wouldn't be surprised, especially over the next three to four years as we see how AI unfolds, we're going to see more and more restrictions or requirements on how businesses, companies, brands can leverage data. Which kind of leads me to my first question for you, which is kind of how the data found foundation is evolving and you know, why is it so critical for businesses to integrate first party CRM data into their marketing and marketing capabilities, into their content and their content efforts versus relying on what historically has been, you know, something that you and I have worked on together, third party data, you know, tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, other marketing tools that even exist out there to help companies like SimilarWeb. I want to understand like why, why is that value there in that, in that first party CRM data so critical?

[Eddie Patch]

Yeah, it feels like the market's just been evolving higher and higher from the third party data to then there's also second party data which a lot of people don't talk about, which is kind of, if you were to connect with your partner and share mutual customer data or plug into some type of data co op that would be your second party data. And then first party data is just becoming more and more valuable. It's becoming the gold standard because everybody has access to third party data at this point. It's fairly commoditized and first party data is only reserved for the ones that are doing well in acquiring and actually building their first party data set. So the move into first party data is becoming even more and more important. And there's obviously other benefits of truly doubling down on that data set. The first one would be just the accuracy. So it's the compared to third party data where you're not always sure exactly what the source that you're relying on, not to mention it's kind of being passed through a lot of hands sometimes. So the accuracy is just missing. And with first party data you could have a higher reliance on that. And then with any type of third party data or even second, you're not getting the behavioral signals and the preferences of an individual that's typically not coming through in a holistic way. So you're missing on that as well. And then the third one is the understanding of where someone fits into a life cycle or where they are in their buying stage. I think in the old days of search we could kind of assess where somebody is in their buying journey based on how deep into a website they're going, time on site, all those type of signals. But now we're getting this massive comprehensive view of really where people sit in their life cycle stage. Not just today, but their historical and the journey that they've taken to get there.

[Jordan Cooney]

Absolutely. I totally agree on that journey piece. And I think it's becoming, and it has over the past couple years become more and more muddled for search marketers, paid or organic. As Google has changed the game and unequivocally I think it has hurt them, hurt Google more than helped them to not be as transparent. Which is why I think there's going to be a continued push to discovery and other experiences like OpenAI and ChatGPT or other LLM models. But before we get into that, how do you see AI and AI technology helping to change the ability to pull, use and fuel the businesses that want to use this first party data? How's AI really transforming that capability to do everything from titles improvements, product page improvements, web improvements? How are you guys seeing that and how have you seen that firsthand in working with your clients and partners?

[Eddie Patch]

Yeah, I mean the introduction of AI into all this entire world means you can instantly do more with your data. And so it's the ability to mine that first party data and actually take action on it. So it's effectively powering the entire experience and personalization engine that's happening across an entire lifecycle journey rather than just looking at individual channels, whether it's email or website now we're looking comprehensively at this golden single marketing view, which a lot of marketers have been chasing for a while. The old term was the omnichannel, and people have been trying to get to it for a long time. But now we're truly at this real single marketing view that it's legit, it's real interesting.

[Jordan Cooney]

And what are some examples of this? How are you seeing this work for certain brands or certain companies or partners that you've worked with over the years?

[Eddie Patch]

Yeah. So some of the more sophisticated marketers, whether it's like a Sephora or some of the companies, like a fanduel, people that are really on the cutting edge of marketing, they're now looking at it in terms of segment journeys and like the same way you would kind of look at cohorts where you, instead of just looking at aren't, but like the old way of looking at it was, well, we sent out an email today and we had a 40% open rate, so things must be good.

[Jordan Cooney]

Right?

[Eddie Patch]

But it's actually like, you want to know the whole journey of what did it look like when we sent an email, people that ended up on site and then they got an SMS push. What did that cohort look like? And that's actually when you introduce AI, you have an opportunity to begin having hundreds. And some people, even companies, have thousands of different these cohorts or sub segments that they're tracking the journey across the whole thing. And not just based down to one email, no doubt.

[Jordan Cooney]

Yeah, I love that. And I think you brought this up here because when you understand those segments, you then get to know how to better personalize your efforts. So when it comes to personalization and what we do around personalization, what types of customer data actually create the value for these brands? What data really drives their understanding of the segment to personalization? And I'm throwing in another kind of curveball into this question, which is like, how is zero party data part of that game?

[Eddie Patch]

Yeah. So we live in an era where I log into Spotify, I have my own dj, I sign into Netflix, it's telling me what to watch.

[Jordan Cooney]

Right.

[Eddie Patch]

Everything is personalized and tailored to us as individuals. And with the access to introducing that data now the entire journey is being personalized. So it's looking at your past behavior, it's looking at the contextual signals that make who you are and make it feel more relevant to you. And zero party data, let's go back to that hierarchy. So it's the third party, second party first, and now the introduction of zero party data, which is where people are, are opting in to give us some of their own preference data and some information about themselves that they might not have provided otherwise. So an example of that would be if I'm Expedia and I let's say I launch an adventure game to my customer base where they can swipe left or swipe right based on their favorite destinations and at the end I'm going to tell you what your dream vacation looks like. So that's now collecting a lot of information about does this person like cities or beaches?

[Jordan Cooney]

Right.

[Eddie Patch]

Do they like long flights? Are they looking for the, they love the short getaways. So that's the zero party data. So not only does it access that more personalization, but it also gives you an opportunity to do a few other things. So it's the cross channel consistency. So the experience that they have with your brand is going to be the same now because we're going to know a little bit more. We could tailor it to you whether you're on mobile or on a website. So it's a better overall brand experience. So it's unlocking a lot.

[Jordan Cooney]

It is. I love this concept because when we hear Google in particular talk about how things are changing with AI, one of the things they keep pushing on is this concept of multimodal. And I fundamentally believe that multimodal experiences go beyond just images and video. I mean at the backbone that those are really important assets that engage users. But multimodal really gets to this concept of how can you collect zero party data? How can you engage with a user so deeply that the experience, a swipe or an engagement to provide insight then gives that brand knowledge about the user that then helps them curate better campaign, better market, better target that particular user. I'm curious Eddie, I mean on this concept where do you see brands using the zero party data to shape content, shape experiences and how does that end up in organic or LLM like discovery?

[Eddie Patch]

Yeah. So I actually want to ask a question on that because you're closer to the way the LLMs are shaping the way people search today.

[Jordan Cooney]

Yeah.

[Eddie Patch]

Uh, if you take the like the experience of using an LLM with a contextual window, let's say we're using perplexity and it's giving you these follow up questions and you're kind of just like you're almost chatting with the search and then you're telling it what is interesting to you and what's the next interesting point to you would in your opinion is that that seems like a Form of zero party data at that point, it's like a long tail 0.0party data.

[Jordan Cooney]

Yeah, no question. I think that conceptually though, most LLMs today start with a blank slate. Right. Like they start with like a word. Blank word Doc. It used to be like the age old writer's block which is like, oh, you have to do something and you have to start writing and creating something. LLM based discovery starts in the same way today, right. You open up ChatGPT, it's just a blank field. Right. Over time I think they're going to evolve that and certainly brands are evolving that into the experiences that they have. So yours about Expedia, spot on. Right. Which is like how do you get to a dream vacation? Well, that's a lot of different interests, budgets, you know, data that you need about that user in order to provide them a really relevant outcome on a dream vacation. I think that those curated experiences are the connection point between a brand and their consumers that unlock value in LLMs. Unlock value in Google search. AI can help us get there. But you know, the realization here is that we don't actually think about, at least in my opinion, search marketers aren't actually thinking about this as zero party data.

[Eddie Patch]

Yeah.

[Jordan Cooney]

They're not yet thinking about this and it's not yet connected to their content campaigns in my opinion.

[Eddie Patch]

Yeah. Okay, so let's say it's a future version of it, but in present day the way it's happening is that going back to the swipe left, swipe right game, each of those data points are being matched back to the individual and it's making its way back into snowflake or databricks, it's making its way back into a data warehouse, it's getting stitched over to the customer id. And the way it's surfacing itself again later is rather than having a basic email of hi, first name, maybe this is like we know you looked at this product. Well now I could say, hey, there's a sale. It's to Paris. You told us you like Paris. We know you've got kids. You mentioned you're a family. Like now I'm really personalizing, tailoring. And that could be an email that could be a flash sale with a push notification. It's just not a generic push anymore. It's truly talking to the individual at that point.

[Jordan Cooney]

A hundred percent. I remember I've been traveling internationally for many, many years now. Right. And I remember back when I was traveling quite a bit with ebay and.

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[Jordan Cooney]

With search metrics that I would have to go into my banking institutions and notify them that I was going to be traveling so that my credit card would work, my debit card would work. Like all my stuff would work, right? Like, yeah. And over the years that stopped happening. Why? Because I bought the ticket on my credit card. They knew I was going to be on a plane to that country. There was no, like, it was very evident through the data trail that they knew where I was going to be and how I was going to probably engage through hotel purchases, plane purchases, train purchases, all these events. And they kind of preemptively opted me into this travel notification. And I think we're moving into a world where that's going to be part of how we think about, about marketing campaigns, content marketing, paid campaigns, email campaigns. And I'm curious about this implementation, right? Because in my example that took years for these financial institutions to get to that level of sophistication. But like this data stitching and this capability for marketers, specifically marketers, digital marketers, to be able to stitch customer data is still a challenge. And you mentioned it earlier, Omnichannel multi channel, like this world is got so many different ways of thinking about where we invest our money from marketing perspective, how does ID resolution, how does customer ID information help us organize and overcome the obstacles of understanding how to implement effective marketing campaigns?

[Eddie Patch]

Yeah, that's really good question. I mean, I think it comes down to the brands that are willing to prioritize customer experience, which, which seems far removed. But if you think about the story about the travel like there, there's two brands that are doing that. There's two different brands. Let's say it's when I landed in America, in Paris, I used my card one time and then American Express started sending me offers for the local area. They, they were tailoring it to where I was. There was no question, just to your example. Yeah, but then there could be an airline, let's say it rhymes with shmu, United, where I have a five hour layover somewhere and no one's even checking in or even acknowledging that I was sitting in an airport waiting for five hours. There's just no contextual connection. And I think it comes down to customer experience and those that are willing to invest in it regardless of whether they're investing or not. Though the way it gets to this situation is just the way companies grow and it's the way that they, they evolve with their tech stack. So you have companies that are growing quickly and they're, they're purchasing software here and there, they're purchasing tools here and there. And oftentimes it becomes really siloed and you're at that point it becomes really tough to start stitching together and having that accurate viewpoint.

[Jordan Cooney]

So in your opinion Eddie, is it, is this like a organizational segmentation problem? Like because the, the customer support or customer teams aren't talking to the marketing teams and they're just so siloed. Is that, is that one of the main root causes of where this lack of connection isn't taking place? Like, I mean your example is perfect, right? Like most people who travel, they travel a lot and there's like basically like designated routes. Like you can pretty much pinpoint when someone's going to be at a specific airport or a specific venue and you know pretty much instantly that this person, person is loyal to these hotels or loyal to these airlines and you can kind of very quickly create a profile that allows you to sell them donuts or snacks or whatever it is, you know. So what's lacking here? What's preventing these marketing teams? Is it siloed organizations? Is it lack of technology? Is it both?

[Eddie Patch]

It's both, but it's the siloed organizations because the Ones that I've talk to that move quicker and actually solve this faster. They may be in a situation where they have a loyalty team, so they have a loyalty id, they have a technical team that's powering the in store experience, so they have a POS ID for an individual, they have an in store sign up, they have a web sign up. And before you know you've got four or five minimum profiles per person. And then each of those examples I gave you represents a different team in an enterprise organization. There's the loyalty team and then there's our email teams. Every channel is being separated. When you get up into the Fortune 500, the ones that do it well have acknowledged it at the C suite level that this needs to be improved. And I've seen brands go as far as creating almost like a center of excellence where it's somebody who comes in and creates a very senior team that oversees all of it. They essentially implement their own tech stack and they sit on top of everything. And so now I have full plugin into our customer tickets, I have full plugin into the pos and I can easily be being that I'm the one orchestrating it as a single team, I can finally use the right technology to fix that. But the companies that can't get to that center of excellence or they don't have that acknowledgment at the top, it's just going to continue being siloed. It's a really hard thing to fix.

[Jordan Cooney]

And in your opinion, do you think AI is going to reshape the way we measure and reach these successful executions? Is AI essentially going to help us leapfrog this blocker that many organizations are facing?

[Eddie Patch]

Yeah, it is. So if companies can trust it from an operational standpoint, it gives you the ability to fix this at scale. So the first examples of AI would, When you talk about AI to a brand, the first things they think about are the basic image creation, content generation. And those are all fine and fun, but I don't know that we're quite there yet in terms of some of that. But from an operations standpoint, there's a lot of low hanging fruit. Here's an example of how if you use technology and AI to fix this, you could have a better situation. So upfront, the company or the marketing team, let's say they basically go in and they prioritize what priority a customer should receive in terms of communication. And the first five, 10 priorities are kind of manual. If it's their birthday, they get their birthday. If it's a customer issue complaint that gets prioritized.

[Jordan Cooney]

Sure.

[Eddie Patch]

After that they begin to trust AI to tell them what priority and exclusion should be happening and how it should look going forward. So what we at Optimove, there's a product we have, it's called Self Optimizing Journey and we have that self optimizing campaign. So it's basically deciding for you when something should be prioritized and when it should be pushed down. Because doing it at scale with millions of customers is just impossible.

[Jordan Cooney]

100% is. I'm curious though, on this same topic around how we kind of orchestrate different layers about audiences and different layers about like the customers that we look at and like how we organize this information. And I want to give you a personal example, right. Like I travel, you know, a fair bit. Maybe, maybe a couple times a month. I'm on the road, I'm going to visit a client, I'm going to go to event conference, whatever it is, right. But 90% of my travel is business. Right? Like I'm traveling for work. I'm not traveling for fun. Although arguably my wife might tell me that she thinks I'm just out there having fun. But let's be honest, it's not always fun and games.

[Eddie Patch]

I get that too.

[Jordan Cooney]

But the interesting thing is whenever I get emails from any of my loyalty groups, whether it be my airline, hotels, my car, all of them have these lovely photos of these family vacations. But 90% of my travel is business. I'm not hanging out with my kids on the beach. As much as I would love to be able to do that. That's not what's happening. Tell me about how we should be organizing, orchestrating the layers and then connecting that to the channels we use. These diverse marketing channels like consistently are evolving now, especially in search to really get better about that sophistication. I can promise you I could open a United email right now. And I promise you that that email is all about some fun vacation in Hawaii that ain't happening.

[Eddie Patch]

I don't think there's any tool right now that's completely solving that. To be honest. There's two ways that marketers approach it. They do what's called deterministic matching and then they do probabilistic matching. Deterministic is basically like, hey, Jordan signed up with a work email. This address he plugged in, probably his work address. Because of that, the transactions that we're seeing tied to this profile, most likely they are business oriented. And then there's this additional wave of thought which is the probabilistic which says, well, Jordan does this flight a lot, but he had this outlier flight where he, he actually ended up in Hawaii. So we kind of think that maybe there, this isn't just a professional email. This is actually showing us more signals that he might be a real person and actually goes on real trips. The challenge with the probabilistic right now is that it's, it's back to that accuracy issue. So I think there's a, there's definitely a room for a company to come in and start creating an AI generated version of that to help improve it. This is what these, some of these big companies are built on right now. Like if you think about like a Merkel transunion, they are the ones who sit on all this data.

[Jordan Cooney]

Yeah, the financial data.

[Eddie Patch]

Yeah, yeah. And it's not just financial data, it's all the profile signals that make up Jordan and then being able to separate it out between the business and the personal. But they're ultimately the ones that will probably power that if they can innovate and catch up and build the AI components faster. And I've seen TransUnion in particular, they're, I mean they're building some really cool stuff when it comes to this. But yeah, still still a big challenge for, for retail and for all brands.

[Jordan Cooney]

When you think about the brands that you've been partnering with or that you've been exploring the use of integrating all of these, these Data components, particularly 00 party data, what are some of the measurements? Like, how should they, how should our audience be thinking about measuring, measuring the effectiveness of collecting that zero party data and then integrating it into our marketing, our content, our web experiences.

[Eddie Patch]

I think it comes down to first and foremost that people just need to be able to operationalize the zero party data more and they need to be able to mine, use AI to mine their first party data more. I think that's kind of where people are, is how do we actually use this and make it a utility for the business. And there become interesting ways to measure it because now you're connecting into your CRM and you're using that to then create new website experiences. You're basically creating new content. So the engagement becomes a big piece. So I think if you think about the traditional time on site, but it's the engagement with, well, we got them to come in and actually open the mobile app from that really personalized push and then how many pages did they go to in the app? How many things did they put into their cart? So I think it becomes a measurement of the engagement right now.

[Jordan Cooney]

Right.

[Eddie Patch]

And then with platforms like ours, we could take it further and instead of just measuring the vanity metrics, we could start to say that campaign you ran translated in X amount of dollars, whether it's per person or per journey, but having a revenue attributed directly tied to that journey, which is something that people haven't been able to do in the past. A lot of those marketing metrics, they used to just live in your esp and you would know that you had a successful campaign with the open rates. But now I could say we did a test and control and we noticed that the 80% that you sent it to actually you had a lift in incremental revenue. And that test group, we clearly see that it didn't attribute into revenue. So I think we're getting closer to a better ROI story rather than just like a fluffy metric at this point.

[Jordan Cooney]

Yep, makes sense. I want to turn this into like a practical action plan, something that our listeners can do. So as marketers and a marketer that might be listening to this episode, what are some of the real steps that they can take to start to integrate data and build the capabilities to reach their audience more effectively, specifically through organic AI LLM channels and the efforts say across content, technical or web experience?

[Eddie Patch]

Yeah, so I think some of it falls in the few themes we touched on. I would say go figure out a way to collect more zero party data. Don't be afraid of things like gamification, which is like the swipe left, swipe right. What are, what are other things you could do in store with kiosks? Anything that you're doing to improve on that zero party data and then operationalize it. So use it for some SEO rich landing pages tailored to that segment. Start to actually put it into motion with the onsite content too. Number two, find ways to connect that into your CRM for the full website experience so that you're your. As your content strategy builds, you're aligning the content to those, those same segments and then, and then three, find the less blatant AI use cases that you can uncover. Going back to my example earlier, don't, don't just look at the, the imagery and the content creation. Go find ways that you can optimize campaigns and optimize segments and start to trust AI for that because it's going to give you smarter insights about your audience and it's going to get you away from the vanity metrics. So I would say just don't be afraid to hop in and start using it on the operational side. Love it.

[Jordan Cooney]

And that wraps up this episode of the Voice to Search podcast. A huge thank you to Eddie Patch from Optimove for joining us. If you'd like to contact Eddie, you can find a link to his LinkedIn profile in our show notes, or you can find his information on voicesofsearch.com for more information about Optimove, visit optimove.com if you haven't subscribed yet and want a daily stream of SEO and content marketing knowledge in your podcast feed, hit the subscribe button in your podcast app or on YouTube and we'll be back in your feed soon. Okay, that's all for today, but until next time, remember, the answers are always in the data.

[Eddie Patch]

SA.