Author: Franz Malten Buemann

 

The post-cookie marketing landscape creates a plethora of marketing opportunities. To navigate it efficiently, it’s worth exploring alternatives to third-party data-driven marketing. Here are 20 tips from top experts on how to navigate this world and create ethical campaigns with the resources available.

 

Almost half (49%) of respondents believe that data privacy is a shared responsibility between businesses, individuals, government bodies and technology innovators (iProspect x Microsoft). The data-harvesting bonanza had to come to an inevitable end. Numerous regulations such as GDPR and the CCPA were merely an interlude to the actions of giants such as Google and Apple deciding to move away from unethical third-party cookies, which are often handed over in murky circumstances.

 

This is a clear and strong response to consumer concerns:

 

91% of consumers are concerned about the amount of data companies can collect about them (iProspect x Microsoft), and 42% have taken steps to limit the amount of data they share online. (dentsu)
Only 15% of consumers believe they are getting good value in exchange for letting companies have access to their data. (iProspect x Microsoft)
One in two (52%) believe organizations should get their active consent to use personal data to provide them with more tailored online advertising. (dentsu)

 

So whether we want it or not, the legacy third-party data-driven marketing system is in for a robust transformation. Already, many marketing professionals seem to be honing in on how to ethically acquire data and use it wisely. Fortunately, it yields positive results as brands slowly regain consumer trust.

 

So how do we tackle this challenge?

 

8 tips from Deloitte on how to deal with the demise of third-party cookies

 

In the report: How the cookie crumbled: Marketing in a cookie-less world Deloitte gives 8 specific tips to help strategically plan the transition from third-party cookies to first- and zero-party data.

 

#1 Build on your data

 

Streamline first-party data collection. Precise, careful and thorough implementation of data collection mechanisms will provide a solid foundation for targeting and personalization for users who have already engaged with your brand. Remember, however, that starting early is key to success, as collecting enough data takes time.

 

#2 Play the technology card

 

Implement best-in-class cookie consent management solutions, if you have not yet, to ensure that the first-party data you have is fully compliant and future-proofed. Also, clearly communicate to your customers how you process and protect their data to increase their trust.

 

#3 Explore second-party data from technology leaders

 

For example, Google and Facebook offer aggregated but detailed audience data collected on their platforms (including Google Search, YouTube and all sites within the Google Display Network, as well as Facebook and Instagram) through their advertising networks (Google Ads and Display & Video 360 and Facebook Ads Manager), completely free of charge (as opposed to third-party data).

 

#4 Stay informed about ethical third-party audiences

 

Not all external audiences rely on cookie data. Some of these groups can be targeted using for example VisualDNA, which transparently aggregates its audiences based on personality quizzes. More of these non-cookie-based audiences should emerge in the next two years, once third-party cookies are banned.

 

#5 Explore publisher data

 

Major publishers typically offer display, video and native buys using the data they have, when contracting directly or through auctions.

 

#6 Use unusual personalization tactics

 

Campaigns that use deep personalization through clever geo-targeting and time-parting (often referred to as ‘moment marketing’) typically generate high engagement and even lead to advertising awards, yet they are still not widely used in the industry.

 

#7 Rethink your martech ecosystem

 

Try to reformulate your data ownership and technology policies to get the most control, visibility, and utility out of your own data. First-party data is now more important than ever, and owning all your data will act as a safety net in case you need to swap agencies or tools, which might otherwise result in data loss.

 

#8 Win trust and maximize profits

 

Maximize expected profits with a better customer experience based on increased customer trust, combined with cleverly personalized messaging to reach them when they are most likely to commit to doing business with you.

 

12 tricks from SALESmanago Marketing Automation practitioners

 

For more specific advice, we turned to expert practitioners who implement effective marketing strategies using the latest technology on a daily basis.

 

#1 Maya: Play the Gated Content Right

 

Trick: Prepare high-quality downloadable content and exchange it for zero- and first-party data

 

What’s the shtick: Content consumers are more likely to exchange data in exchange for tangible benefits and the promise of responsible use of the information. Leverage forms and landing pages to clearly communicate to your audience what they will gain in return for their data and how you will use it. Remember also to prepare content based on the real interests of your buyer personas to motivate each of them to leave additional information. Use website hyper-personalization to make your landing pages even more attractive and easily adapt them to the needs of an individual person.     

 

Additional resources: 

 

[Free Ebook] Data Ethics & Customer Preference Management – These trends will dominate eCommerce

[Tips & Tricks] 5 super advanced and turbo effective segmentations for eCommerce 

 

Maya Kowalska: For many years, has helped many global B2B and eCommerce brands create and execute effective content marketing strategies spiced up with top martech solutions.

 

#2 Luke: Create automated scenarios for anonymous users

 

Trick: Leverage SALESmanago CDP capabilities to automate for anonymous users and effectively respond to each contact’s behavior.

 

What’s the shtick: Website Automation Rules allow you to run automatic scenarios on your website that will also work for anonymous users. Based on their behavior in real time, you can modify the content on the site, offer help or propose subscription to a newsletter or Web Push notifications.

 

Additional resources: 

 

[Read more] Website Automation   

 

#3 Luke: Personalize your website

 

Trick: Capture user interest through customized content and banners on your website.

 

What’s the shtick: With the information collected in your CDP, even in the absence of third-party cookies, you can effectively personalize your site to achieve the desired conversions. With the combination of first- and zero-party cookies with the information collected in your user profile, you can use them at any time to make your website and its individual elements more appealing to potential and current customers.

 

Additional resources: 

 

[Read more] Website Personalization   

 

Lukas Jordan: For several years associated with SALESmanago, where with a smile on his face he implements the most complex Marketing Automation scenarios. Miracle manager and specialist in building positive relations in the business (post-cookie) world.

 

#4 Roxanne: Value relationships with existing customers, but nurture those who aren’t yet ready to buy

 

Trick: Use a slow approach to educate potential customers to bring them closer to buying on their terms.

 

What’s the shtick: With Lead Nurturing you will prepare a potential customer to make a purchase – a well prepared program can increase the conversion rate by up to 50%. It will allow you to provide key information, comparisons or concepts to direct the thinking of the potential customer and, as a result, accelerate the completion of the sales process. Directing recurring messages to prospects and analyzing their behavior in response to those messages (first-party data) makes it easier to segment contacts and pinpoint the hottest leads for sales. Automated welcome messages will also work great to immediately identify a potential customer’s area of interest and equip them with knowledge about your business or product offering.

 

Additional resources:

 

[Tips & Tricks] Lead nurturing x 6 steps of successful Lead Nurturing x Alan Weiss’ Persuasion Theory 

[Free Checklist] Effective Lead Nurturing – Free Checklist     

 

Roxanne Lempart: Head of Customer Success, she is experienced in implementing Marketing Automation strategies. A very friendly and smiley person who is always willing to help others.

 

#5 Dagmara: Verify your database and send win-win messages

 

Trick: Tailor messages to specific audiences based on information about their transactional behavior.

 

What’s the shtick: Use the RFM Marketing Automation module that segments your contact database using transactional data. It allows you to appreciate loyal customers by sending them tailored messages and to target special offers for premium customers based on collected zero-party data. And for less engaged you may introduce incentives to mobilize them. You can perform all actions in one panel and you don’t need to create additional segmentation.

 

Additional resources: 

 

[General overview] RFM Marketing Automation 

[Technicalities] RFM Marketing Automation 

 

Dagmara Zilska: One of the most experienced Project Managers at SALESmanago, she is eager to share her wealth of experience with others to help them understand the benefits of properly leveraging the platform’s potential.

 

#6 Tatiana K.: Increase your revenue with dynamic first-party data-driven retargeting campaigns

 

Trick: Use the fact that a user has browsed a specific product on your site to send them a tailored offer

 

What’s the shtick: With the collected data about customers’ interests on your website, you can reach out to them through various channels such as email, SMS, Web Push to get them to come back to your website and purchase the product they are looking for. CDP collects data about browsed pages, products put in cart, favorite products. Furthermore, you can always ask the user to indicate their preferences regarding the communication channels in which they want to receive messages and thus create relevant segments in the Hyper Segmentation Center. Use this information and target personalized offers to customers based on their actual interests.

 

Additional resources: 

 

[Tips & Tricks] Shopping cart abandonment and recovery: the definitive guide for e-commerce 

[General overview] Customer Preference Center  

 

Tatiana Kozeniuk: For several years has worked as a Marketing Automation Specialist in SALESmanago helping loads of companies around the world to implement the most complicated marketing campaigns and get as much as possible out of them.

 

#7 Ela: Target messages using zero-party data you collect in SALESmanago

 

Trick: Target customers precisely using advanced filtering.

 

What’s the shtick: Advanced filtering allows you to effectively reach the right customer groups. Appreciate them with birthday emails, split them into age groups, exclude inactive contacts from mailings. This will gain you your users’ trust and reduce the risk of unsubscribing from mailing lists. Use filtering and observe the growth of OR in the analytics panel.

 

Additional resources: 

 

[Read more] Advanced emails addressing

 

Ela Cieluch: Heavily involved in one of the largest projects supported by SALESmanago, she successfully tackles every challenge with her vast knowledge, experience and thoughtful approach.

 

#8 Tatiana S.: Analyze the results of automated emails and conduct A/B/X tests to learn more about your audience

 

Trick: Testing messages sent by automation processes allows you to spot the items that attract your customers’ attention and encourage them to perform a particular action effectively (e.g. open a message and click the link in it).

 

What’s the shtick: Simply check which of your dynamic and regular emails and personalized banners are producing better results. You can check a maximum of four messages at once. Messages are randomly selected and sent to designated recipients. Opens and clicks are counted automatically. In the test, you can set the proportion of the banners coverage before and after the test.  For example, you can decide that the message with the highest click-through rate (CTR), will be displayed far more often than others. As a result, you can use the knowledge about your customers to better adjust the design of your website and email communication to their preferences.

 

Additional resources: 

 

[Read more] A/B/X tests of messages sent by automation rules

[Read more] Workflow: creating an automated campaign

[Tips & tricks] How to use A/B/X tests for marketing campaigns optimization and higher conversion

 

Tatiana Sapel: Professional Project Manager, currently supporting the world’s biggest brands. She is characterised by efficiency and conscientious hard work tailored at achieving the benefits desired by her clients.

 

#9 Jacob: Analyze first- and zero-party data and predict future customer behavior

 

Trick: Reduce churn risk and tailor messages using predictive analytics.

 

What’s the shtick: Using predictive analytics will allow you to predict future customer actions. Based on the collected transactional and behavioral data (based on your audience’s past and present actions), you can adjust your marketing efforts accordingly to reduce the risk of losing a customer, thereby increasing your profits.

 

Additional resources: 

 

[Read more] Prediction and purchase dashboard

 

Jacob Sieprawski: One of the top professionals at SALESmanago, through his experience of working with clients from various industries, he is extremely knowledgeable about Marketing Automation strategies, a part of his daily routine.

 

#10 Tomas: Tailor the content displayed on your site to each user according to their preferences

 

Trick: Apply personalized widgets, banners and messaging across your site to tailor content to each individual user.

 

What’s the shtick: Make your visitors feel at home with real-time personalization that lowers your site’s rejection rate. Replace generic offers with personalized ones, tailored perfectly to their needs. Use data about your visitors’ preferences and profiles to help them find what they came for right where they are searching. Tailor site content to each individual contact in real time.

 

Additional resources: 

 

[General overview] Personalizacja strony WWW

 

Tomas Tomczyk: Experienced Marketing Automation specialist with strong technical knowledge. He has a lot of successes in his portfolio and thanks to the acquired skills he supports his clients and less experienced colleagues very effectively.

 

#11 Kate: Build audiences based on your own data

 

Trick: Show your audience ads on Facebook and ad networks based on their interactions with your brand.

 

What’s the shtick: Use Social Media as a communication channel to reach your audience. Build groups based on specific information about individual contacts. Display personalized ads that encourage them to return to the site and resume their interrupted actions. Referring to specific actions (first-party data) and information provided by the recipient (zero-party data) will ensure they see content that is meaningful and valuable to them. Use compelling pop-ups to collect data, which will help build knowledge about your audience through a series of questions that are contextually tailored to the content they are browsing.

 

Additional resources:

 

[Read more] Custom Modal Designer

[Read more] Wizard: Pop-up/Exit pop-up Express

 

#12 Kate: Avoid the pitfalls of third-party cookies by enabling Web Push Notifications for messaging

 

Trick: Web Push notifications rely on first- and zero-party data to ethically engage your audience with your brand.

 

What’s the shtick: Fully leverage your knowledge of customers and their behavior within your online store to create engaging notifications. Send beautiful and effective static notifications reminding recipients about products and topics they were interested in on your site. Create attractive Dynamic Web Push notifications and send product recommendations using the scenario of your choice to encourage subscribers to visit a product page. Avoid ad networks that use third- and second-party cookies because Web Push notifications reach your subscriber base via browser.

 

Additional resources:

 

[New Feature] Engage customers with Web Push Notifications 2.0: One to one, AI rich content, no code, multilanguage and fully CDP driven

 

Kate Rejdych: Chief Product Officer at SALESmanago. She has been supporting strategic product development for years. She combines analytical skills with great curiosity about the martech industry and new technologies market. Featured in the report Strong Women in IT.

 

How to survive in a digital cookieless world – a brief summary

 

As we read in Gartner’s 3 Steps for Marketers to Prepare for a Cookieless World: „Marketers should expect substantial and sustained disruption to digital advertising to last through the first half of 2023, or longer.” We should dismiss the delusion that the third-party data-lypse will be unnoticeable and painless. Anyone who wants to efficiently perform marketing in the digital world must take specific actions aimed at shifting old paradigms and habits.

 

The support of those who have already walked this path is priceless in such a situation. If you want to share your ways to a cookieless world, or find another one to suit your business, contact your SALESmanago Success Manager!

People who work in marketing automation, curious to know what a typical day is like for you and what you are spending the majority of your time on!
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Last Updated on October 15, 2021 by Rakesh Gupta Big Idea or Enduring Question: How do you deploy Flows or Processes using the Visual Studio Code?   Objectives: After reading this blog post, the reader will be able to: Understand how to use the Visual Studio Code to deploy flows
The post Getting Started with Process Builder – Part 74 (Deploy Flow(s) or Process(es) Using the Visual Studio Code) appeared first on Automation Champion.

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Customer Intelligence Platforms are the hottest buzzwords on everybody’s lips in the marketing world in 2021. From this article, you will learn what connects them to the Customer Data Platforms, and what makes a huge difference. And, most importantly, what value they are able to bring to your company.

 

As the Accenture survey shows, 48% of customers expect to make the brand feel special for being good customers. A proactive attitude and extremely personalized service are required. In 2021 solving problems with template solutions do not mean a delightful customer experience anymore. 

 

Though companies work hard to address the customers’ expectations, it is not always easy to achieve. Marketers and customer service need very detailed customer data to personalize their offers and activities. Data scientists need to deliver useful data for the marketers and customer service lightning fast, so they can help out the customers here and now. 

 

Systems like Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Master Data Management (MDM), Data Management Platform (DMP) were developed to address this issue. All of them had a similar problem, they stored data in silos and did not exchange it, so building a single consumer view, useful for marketers, was next to impossible. The introduction of the first-generation Customer Data Platforms (CDP) promised to solve this problem and become a single source of truth useful not only for marketers but across all the company. How did they fare?

 

 What are “classic” CDPs and where do they fail

 

The purpose of “classic” CDPs

 

Customer Data Platform is a digital tool that gathers and unifies first-party consumer data from multiple sources and combines them into a single, comprehensive customer profile.

 

A similar definition is provided by the CDP Institute: “packaged software that creates a persistent, unified customer database that is accessible to other systems.”

 

“Packaged software” means that CDP is ready-to-use, off-the-shelf software, provided usually by the vendor. 

 

The part about “persistent, unified customer database” means that CDP collects the data from many different sources, basically, all the company’s touchpoints, where acquiring first-party consumer data is possible, like sales, loyalty, customer service, social media, etc. Data from different sources is stored in CDP, then merged and unified into a single customer profile.

 

Finally, “accessible to other systems” means that customer data is shared with any other system that needs it, like those used by sales, marketing, commerce. 

 

So the Customer Data Platforms serve three purposes:

 

They collect and unify all the company’s first-party data

 

Most of the systems, like email or previously mentioned CRM, used by marketers operate in silos. That means the data stays within them and is not exchanged across the systems. This fragmentation obscures the big picture. CDP serves as a connection between the fragmentary sources and produces a single truth.

 

 They enable effective customer data management

 

CDPs enable the company to manage effectively first-party data in the context of privacy and data rights, by controlling what data is, under what consent is available to whom inside the company.

 

They enable data-based actions

 

First-party data is unified into consumer profiles. These profiles are then structured into audience segments. They can be then used across other platforms within the company.

 

The problem

 

With such a promise first-generation CPDs emerged in 2013. They were designed to unify consumer data and provide a single source of truth for all company’s divisions, to make the actions made inside the segments work in synergy. 

 

In practice, they proved to be too narrowly focused on marketing use and did not consider the entire end-to-end customer experience across the company.  In the October 2019 report “For B2C Marketers, Customer Data Platforms Overpromise and Underdeliver”  Forrester concluded: “CDPs lack crucial capabilities to solve for identity resolution, data hygiene, and cross-channel orchestration.”. Without these capabilities, CDPs “can’t meet enterprise B2C marketers’ expectations for personalized and targeted customer engagement.”

 

What was the source of the problem? The first-generation CDPs were technically able to gather data from all the sources the company provided, they also had the functionalities to build a single consumer profile. But to build this profile, all the data had to be manually analyzed by the data scientists. Only on the basis of their analyses, suitable actions could be taken.

 

And as Harvard Business Review discovered in 2018, up to 80% of the time is spent by data scientists just to organize and clean raw data to uncover meaningful information. A huge amount of work put into just organizing datasets leaves them with just 20% of the time to perform the actual analysis.  This was the aforementioned problem of data hygiene.

 

This leads to another area, where traditional CDPs fall short and that is providing holistic consumer profiles, useful across all the company, not only the marketers but also sales, customer service, loyalty etc. Pushed by the time limit, data scientists are only able to produce fragmented models. Then, on the basis of these incomplete models, the actions also had to be taken manually. 

 

There was a lot of data, but intelligence did not effectively emerge from it. This is when CIPs entered the stage.

 

Customer Intelligence Platforms, the next generation of CDPs

 

Customer Intelligence Platform (CIP) is the next step in CDPs evolution. CIPs include zero-party data along with first-party data to provide insights. And they leverage AI and machine learning to understand, resolve and evaluate both structured and unstructured data available to the company.  

 

Solving with AI the identity resolution, data hygiene, and cross-channel orchestration problems, that the “classic” CDPs had, include:

 

Resolving and de-duplicating core master data about prospects, customers, accounts, locations, transactions, preferences, and associated reference data.
Matching data entities and new record types.
Enriching the first-party data with zero-party indicators. 
Allowing a wide range of users to perform complex analysis via a seamless interface.
Generating multiple unique customer views in real-time.

 

CIPs use AI and machine learning to gather, analyze and evaluate qualitative and quantitative data. They are able to share insights with marketing, sales, customer service, financial, etc. way more effectively than “classic” CDPs were. Adding intelligent automation removes consumer friction points by streamlining data-driven actions and allows to monitor every step of the customer journey. On this basis, predictive customer behavior models are created. 

 

Examples of effective cross-channel orchestration:

 

An issue is reported to customer service. CIP informs the service that this is a high-value client to the company that has just made a large purchase.
An issue is reported to customer service.  CIP informs the marketers to exclude this client from the planned campaign until the issue is resolved, to prevent irritation. 

 

From this standpoint, CIPs are a modern iteration of CDPs, backed by AI and machine learning. Technically speaking, SALESmanago is a Customer Intelligence Platform. We however use the term AI Customer Data Platform with Omnichannel Execution. Next-gen CDP would also describe us accurately. All these terms are technically correct.

 

Benefits the CIP may provide your company with

 

Customer Intelligence Platform provides the company with:

 

 Single consumer view across all the divisions

 

Connects all the devices and collects all the data from all planned touchpoints like which consumer is looking for what, how much time do they spend on searching, what are the most frequently visited places.

 

 Effective Segmentation

 

A single consumer view enables effective segmentation of the audience. AI then further helps to choose the right audience for the campaign. 

 

Enriched  consumer data

 

First-party data is enriched by zero-party data to build a comprehensive insight into a consumer.

 

Unparalleled customer experience

 

AI and machine learning are able to analyze multiple-source data with a speed impossible to achieve by data scientists. It also automates the delivery process across all the channels, ensuring a hyper-personalized, omnichannel customer experience.

 

This in turn results with:

 

Boosting customer loyalty

 

Customer Intelligence Platforms help the company in gathering data relevant for understanding the customer needs and activities. Understanding results in developing the experience that the customers will value. The satisfaction provided by the brand will increase their loyalty.

 

Increasing business agility

 

The Decision-making process and response time can be shortened thanks to real-time access to customer insights.  A brand can respond quickly to changes in the internal and external environments without losing its vision and momentum.

 

Building a real and strong relationship

 

Understanding customers’ needs and values creates a deep and meaningful connection between them and a brand. It makes the interaction more personal, relevant, and consistent.

 

Streamlining marketing efforts

 

All the brand’s efforts to understand the customers and act with relevant reactions are more effective with Customer Intelligence Platform. It also minimizes the cost of all the actions.

 

Creating a competitive advantage

 

Much more differentiated customer experience provided by the Customer Intelligence Platform better suits the needs of the customers. The brand has the means to establish an edge over the competition.

 

Wrapping up

 

From this standpoint, you can call the rise of the Customer Intelligence Platforms a promise made by CDPs finally delivered. AI and machine learning unlocked all the potential that was in the CDP idea from the start.

 

No wonder that 83% of marketers plan to involve AI in their 2021 strategies to provide a more meaningful customer experience. Not only do the majority of the marketers plan to include it into their strategies, but 84% of them also try to develop such capabilities in-house. This however may prove difficult. The companies should take into consideration:

 

cost factors of such operation 
high shortage of AI talents. 

 

Both hiring in-house AI talents and tasking them with building custom AI solution will generate a significant financial burden for the company, as the experts point out. In order to judge it for yourself, it would be wise to assess the vast possibilities of the AI Customer Data Platform with Omnichannel Execution. Request a SALESmanago demo and learn the value we may provide to your company.

As a marketer or business analyst, you know that data is an important part of your success. And the way you store and organize your data will either make your job easier or harder.

There are many ways that you can store data, one of them being data warehousing. This is an excellent option for businesses that need to look at a large amount of data from multiple sources. Today, let’s learn what a data warehouse is and how it can help you analyze your data.

With a data warehouse, you can perform queries and look at historical data over time to improve decision-making. The main people in a company who will use data warehouses are data scientists and business analysts.
A data warehouse will get data from multiple sources, including relational databases or transactional systems. To access the data, analysts will use business intelligence tools to analyze, data mine, make visualizations, and conduct reporting. As data continues to evolve, it’s imperative for businesses to use data to stay competitive.
What is the ultimate outcome of a data warehouse?
The ultimate outcome of a data warehouse is to extract insights, monitor performance, and improve decision-making. By using reports, dashboards, and visualizations, analysts have all the tools they need to make the right decisions.
Benefits of Using a Data Warehouse
1. Historical data.
One of the main benefits of data warehouses is the ability to look at a large amount of historical data over time. With a data warehouse, you can consolidate a large amount of data from many sources to better inform your business decisions. Looking at historical data will allow you to analyze trends over time and strategize effectively.
2. Data from multiple sources.
Additionally, with a data warehouse, you’ll be getting data from multiple sources so you’ll have a more complete picture when it comes time to analyze the information. With something like a data mart, you only get data from a single subject, as opposed to data warehouses that are meant to process and organize data from multiple sources.
3. Stability.
Data warehouses are also more stable sources of data that you can use to look at data at a high level or a granular level. This gives you the flexibility to look at data closely and perform queries quickly. A data warehouse will have high-quality data because it’s coming from multiple sources, it’s consistent and more accurate.
What Data Warehouses are Not
When you first hear the term “data warehouse,” you might think of a few other data terms like “data lake,” “database,” or “data mart.” However, those things are different because they have a more limited scope. While they might perform a similar function, the structure is different. Let’s dive in below.
Data Lake vs. Data Warehouse
A data lake stores unfiltered data from multiple sources to be used for a specific purpose. This means that you’re looking at raw data from something like social media or an app. The datasets are built at the time of analysis. This is low-cost storage for unformatted, unstructured data.
On the other hand, data warehouses are used to analyze and process data. In a data warehouse, the data has already been gathered and contextualized and is ready for analysis. Ultimately, it’s a more advanced data storage tool that can use large amounts of historical data.
Data Mart vs. Data Warehouse
A data mart is a subset of a data warehouse. Usually, they’re designed to easily deliver specific data to a specific user for a specific application. Data marts are single subject in nature, while data warehouses cover multiple subjects.
Database vs. Data Warehouse
Databases are often confused with data warehouses because they serve a similar purpose. However, the difference is that databases are not meant to perform analytics on a large collection of data. Databases are used to record and retrieve data while data warehouses are meant to analyze large amounts of data sets. Think about it like this: data warehouses store data from multiple databases.
Data Warehouse Architecture
A data warehouse architecture is a method you use to organize, communicate, and present your data.
You can use a basic architecture, a staging area, or a staging area and data marts.
This means that you can have a data warehouse get its data and then have the users look at reporting and analysis. Or you can have the data broken down into data marts before users look at the analysis and reporting.
The staging area you see in some of the images below is used to clean and process data before putting it in a warehouse. This simplifies data preparation. To get an idea of what each of these looks like, take a look at the images below.

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Data Warehouse Software
1. Snowflake Data Warehouse

Snowflake data warehouse is a data platform built on the cloud infrastructure. This is a great option for businesses that don’t have the resources to support in-house servers.
With Snowflake, users can pay for storage and share data easily. You can mobilize data seamlessly across public clouds as data consumers, data providers, and data service providers. This software will help you democratize data analytics across your business so all users with varying expertise can make data-informed decisions.

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2. MarkLogic

With this data warehouse solution, you can perform complex search operations with different types of data including documents, relationships, and metadata. MarkLogic is a fully managed, fully automated cloud service to integrate data from silos.
3. Oracle

Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse is a fully managed database tuned and optimized for data warehouse workloads with the performance of Oracle Database. It delivers a new, comprehensive cloud experience for data warehousing that is easy, fast, and elastic.
While data solutions might seem overwhelming, they’re important for your day-to-day business decisions. With a data warehouse, you can simplify your data storage, management, and analytics.

Keeping track of expenses as a business owner can be taxing. You have to document every detail to make sure you stay within your spending limits while promoting your products or services, delivering on promises, and developing new offerings.
A business budget worksheet can help you stay organized.
Having a template to work from will cut down on the time it takes to write down the details of a budget, help you prioritize projects and allocate resources to get them done, and reveal trends of the money you spend versus the results achieved.

Depending on the complexity of your company, you may need to oversee a number of individual budgets while managing the overall spend. The business budget worksheets below range from specific templates — from product marketing to website redesign — to comprehensive ones that cover all aspects of your marketing plan.
Let’s dive in so you can take control of your budget like never before.
How to Write a Business Budget
1. Use Budget Templates
Creating a business budget from scratch can be overwhelming—you need to capture the details of each month’s projected budget, actual spend, and the cumulative total of each.
If you’ve never written a business budget or are looking for a specific marketing worksheet, you can start with HubSpot’s Marketing Budget Templates. This download includes eight well-designed and detailed templates to easily manage your finances, with options for Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. A quick overview explains how to use each template so you can easily start filling in your own information.

Download Now
2. Set Your Strategy and Goals
To make the most of your budget, you have to know what goals you want to achieve and the strategy to get there. If you’re working to bring in more sales (a goal) and plan to improve your website to attract leads (the strategy), you’ll have to put funds towards the redesign project.
Check out these strategic planning models that can help map out your long-term goals if your business is just getting off the ground. That way, your budget will reflect the financial resources needed to accomplish your objectives.
3. Gather the Numbers
Every company has different needs, so no one budget will be exactly the same. A branding and creative budget, for example, will have vastly different line items than a website redesign budget.
No matter what budget you’re putting together, you’ll need all of the relevant expenses for a comprehensive overview. Here are the basic numbers you may want to include:

Revenue projections: Consider your historical financial performance and projected growth income.

Fixed-cost projections: The costs that don’t change (i.e. employee compensation, office rent, business software, insurance, and utilities).

Variable-cost projections: The costs that may change month-to-month (i.e. overtime compensation, supply costs, or software that varies by usage).

Annual project expenses: The cumulative costs of implementing all of your company goals for the year.

Individual project expenses: The costs associated with each project, which should be tracked in individual budget worksheets.

Target profit margin: A ratio that reveals how much money a company makes. Knowing your bottom line — and including it in your budget — is a helpful reminder of what you hope to achieve within the year and a good benchmark when analyzing your monthly financial trends.

Depending on the budget, you can also include cash, inventory, accounts receivable, net fixed assets, or long-term debt.
How to Manage a Business Budget
No budget is an island. All companies are impacted by poorly-managed budgets, especially a small business just starting out.
When your budget is just one piece of the puzzle, you’ll likely need to get it approved by a manager or executive team before spending any money. If you’re running a business on your own or with a small team, it’s smart to find a trusted colleague or financial expert to look over your numbers. They may be able to point out areas to cut costs, reallocate funds, or create larger profit margins.
Want to make sure you’re on track? Figure out how much you should put aside for a marketing budget that meets your goals.
Once your budget is in place, checking in on it once a year isn’t enough — you need to review it monthly (at minimum) to make sure your expenses aren’t out of control. Once you set your annual budget, revisit it at the beginning and end of every month. If you like to be in the know, you can even set a time to review it mid-month to double-check that everything is on track.
When a new project pops up, simply add it to your existing business budget worksheet and make adjustments to the overall expenses. The same thing applies if you wind up dropping a project. Company priorities change constantly, and your budget needs to adapt along with the shifts.
Business Budget Worksheets for Small Businesses
You poured through past financial records, made future projections, mapped out your upcoming projects, and have all of the information you need to build a well-rounded budget. Now it’s time to choose the best business budget worksheet for your goals. Luckily, all of these options make it simple to stay on top of your finances.
HubSpot Marketing Budget Templates
If you want a worksheet for each marketing niche, HubSpot has you covered. One download gives you access to eight budget templates: a master marketing sheet, product marketing, content, paid advertising, public relations, branding and creative, website redesign, and events.

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Small Business Budget Templates
Simplicity is the theme of these business budget worksheets by Smartsheet. Each Excel template is free to download, with options for multiple products, business expenses, startups, and more.

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Business Expense Template
Need a polished business expense budget? Microsoft Office has you covered with this well-designed Excel template that outlines costs for employees, marketing, office space, travel, and training. Just fill in the blanks and send it for approval.

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Year-Over-Year Budget Template
For a simple look at how your incomes and expenses change from year to year, this Excel template from Quickbooks is all you need.

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Freelance Budget Templates
Working for yourself often means combining personal and business expenses. That’s why these Excel templates from Business Load include income projections alongside personal costs. You can even budget what you’ll contribute to taxes, your 401k, and emergency fund all in the same sheet—because you likely have more than enough to manage.

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Sample Business Budget Worksheet
Personally, I’d rather endure the monotony of writing lines than spend all day organizing numbers in a blank spreadsheet. But having an example to work from makes it easier to make sure everything is on track. If you share that mindset, here’s a filled-in sample of a business budget worksheet to get you started.

The sample shows the budget needed for a website redesign project, with each expense categorized to keep it organized and easy to read. You can see where the budget went over (UX testing) and where savings happened (CMS software).
Setting up your own business budget using these templates is so quick and easy, you can have your numbers in order in no time. The sooner you begin, the better off your budget (and business) will be in the months and years to come.