The advent of a cookieless world is upon us and every business that relies on online advertising in any form will be affected by it. Third-party cookies are going away from the Chrome browser whereas Safari and Firefox disable them by default.

So how does this affect online advertising?

In this episode, join hosts Claudiu Murariu, CEO and Co-Founder of InnerTrends, and Arpit Choudhury, Founder of Data-led Academy, and special guest Greg Brunk, Head of Product at MetaRouter, as they dive into server-side tracking: what is this alternative to client-side tracking; how server-side tracking has changed advertising; the risks involved in tracking advertising data and how marketers can avoid them, and the benefits of owning your own user data in today’s industry. 

Next steps:

• Checkout MetaRouter, for server-side integrations with marketing and ad tech tools
• Subscribe to the Data-led Pro, a free newsletter by Arpit from Data-led Academy
• Subscribe to the InnerTrends #DataDiary for SaaS growth insights

A lot of folks consider embracing Product-led Growth or PLG as a move towards shunning sales but that couldn’t be further from the truth. While PLG has managed to become front and center in strategy meetings and presentations, Sales is still the lifeblood of growing companies. 

But the question remains -- why do sales people need to become data-led?

Well, if you ask any sales pro, they will tell you how important a role data plays in their day-to-day, especially product data as it offers a clear window into the most-active accounts. But for the longest time, sales teams have had to rely on whatever data makes it to the CRM even though CRMs were never built with product data or event data in mind. But finally, a new breed of companies dubbed as CRM 2.0 or PLG CRM companies are changing that. 

In this episode of The Data-led Professional podcast, Tim Geisenheimer, co-founder of Correlated - a CRM 2.0 company - joined us to answer questions like: 

• How can sales teams benefit from having access to product data?
• What is the role of data in the current sales workflow at PLG companies?
• What’s the role of RevOps in a PLG company?

Next steps:

• Check out these ideas for sales teams to close more deals
• Learn how to build a product-minded sales team
• Learn why it's important for companies to collect behavioral data
• Subscribe to the InnerTrends #DataDiary for SaaS growth insights

What is a modern data stack? Well, depends on whom you're asking. 

Ask a Head of Data or any data practitioner like an analyst, engineer, or scientist and they are likely to swear by Fivetran or Stitch for ingestion, Snowflake or BigQuery for warehousing, dbt for transformation, and Looker or Mode for BI. Essentially, the focus here is on analytics and therefore it is fair to refer to this as the modern data stack for analytics.

But if you ask a Head of Growth or any product/marketing professional what their data stack looks like, you are likely to hear a different combination every time. This is because, unlike what is happening in data communities, there is very little discussion in growth communities around the modern data stack for growth.

So what exactly is it? 

An extension of the modern data stack for analytics, a modern data stack of growth includes the tools that enable teams to analyze user behaviour to derive insights into the user journey and activate the data based on those insights to build personalized customer experiences across every touchpoint. 

In this episode of The Data-led Professional podcast, hosts Arpit Choudhury @Data-led Academy  and Claudiu Murariu @InnerTrends we answer questions like:n this episode,  alk about :

• What are the different layers and tools of the modern data stack for growth?
• What is the role of Reverse ETL in this stack?
• What is event-based engagement?

Next steps:

• Check out a growth strategy to double revenue using The Rule of 72
• Check out the Data Tracking Setup Wizard by InnerTrends

Web analytics helps understand the sources from where people land on your website and how they navigate through the different pages.
Product analytics helps understand how users interact with your product. It tells you what actions or events users perform, or for that matter, don’t perform once they are inside your product.

In this episode of The Data-led Professional podcast,  Patrick Thompson, Co-founder of Iteratively — a data collection tool — joined hosts Claudiu Murariu @InnerTrends and Arpit Choudhury @Data-led Academy to talk about:  

• What is the difference between web analytics and product analytics?
• Why do you need both web analytics and product analytics?
• How should you go about planning your data collection for analytics?

Next steps: 

• Read the DLA definitive guide on deciding what data to track
• Read Iteratively's fundamental guide on product analytics
• Learn how to setup your product analytics

Tracking customer data refers to tracking data from your primary or first-party data sources — your website and apps. It is a combination of user data (or entity data) and interaction data (or event data). Deciding what data to track and documenting it in a tracking plan is the first step before implementing any analytics or engagement solution. 

In this episode, hosts Claudiu Murariu @InnerTrends and Arpit Choudhury @Data-led Academy talk about:  

• How do you decide what customer data to track?
• What is a data tracking plan and how do you build it?
• What are the risks of not creating a data tracking plan at all?

Next steps: 

• Read the definitive guide on creating a data tracking plan
• Get the ultimate tracking plan template
• See how to build your Data Tracking Plan

The single source of truth for customer data refers to a software system that is able to store data generated across multiple customer touchpoints in a structured manner. In practice, a source of truth can be a Customer Data Platform such as mParticle or a Data Warehouse such as Snowflake.

Depending on the needs and available resources, businesses today can opt for either of these approaches to build their source of truth for customer data. That said, large businesses that have many data sources and a variety of different use cases for customer data can use a combination of a Customer Data Platform and a Data Warehouse.

In this episode of The Data-led Professional podcast, Tejas Manohar, co-founder of Hightouch —  a Reverse ETL tool — joined hosts Claudiu Murariu @InnerTrends and Arpit Choudhury @Data-led Academy to talk about: 

• Why do organizations need a single source of truth?
• What are the benefits of adopting a Data Warehouse as the source of truth?
• How is data analyzed and acted upon once the source of truth is available?

Read select excerpts from the episode here.

Next steps: 

• Read the definitive guide on Customer Data Platforms
• Read the definitive guide on Reverse ETL
• Subscribe to the InnerTrends #DataDiary for SaaS growth insights

Data democratization is the ongoing process of enabling everybody in an organization, irrespective of their technical know-how, to work with data, feel comfortable talking about data, and as a result, make data-led decisions. 

In this episode,  hosts Claudiu Murariu @InnerTrends and Arpit Choudhury @Data-led Academy talk about : 

• Which team generally owns data operations?
• What is the impact of a tightly-aligned team on an organization’s business goals?
• Should every department use their own data tools or should the tools be standardized across the organization?

NEXT STEPS:

• Read the definitive guide on data democratization
• Subscribe to the InnerTrends #DataDiary for SaaS growth insights

Lifecycle emails, also referred to as behavioral emails, are triggered based on a user’s activity (events performed or not performed) while using a product. Lifecycle emails are set up to run on an ongoing basis and new users who match the specified conditions automatically receive relevant emails. 

In this episode, we talk about: 

• How lifecycle emails are different from marketing and transactional emails
• The difference between measuring the performance vs the impact of emails
• How to respect your customer’s inbox by allowing them to configure their preferences
• Tools mentioned: Customer.io, Intercom, Hubspot, Outreach

Next steps:

• Check out the Data-led guides 
• Subscribe to the InnerTrends #DataDiary for SaaS growth insights
• Subscribe on your favorite platform or directly on our podcast page