Bryan on Data, AI & the Future of Marketing

1. How should enterprises evaluate the balance between data privacy and personalization when adopting new marketing technologies?

Enterprises must approach marketing technology adoption with privacy-first design as a foundational principle. Trust with customers is paramount, and without it, no advantage gained from marketing will make up for loss of trust. While enterprises do need to create the right internal policies and governance for marketing teams around how they should use AI-powered resources or generated content (including navigating the complexities of external regulatory requirements for data privacy), they can also integrate tools that are tailored to align with security needs. Databricks’ Data Intelligence for Marketing integrates Unity Catalog’s centralized governance and security with privacy and consent management — partnering with OneTrust — to ensure data is collected, unified, and activated responsibly with full respect for customer consent. This approach helps turn privacy from a compliance burden into a competitive advantage, helping enable personalized experiences at scale without sacrificing customer trust or regulatory compliance. 

 

Regardless of technical skill, the need for marketers to access real-time data is important to effectively respond to changing customer behavior and broader market dynamics. The time it takes to go from event to insight to action can mean the difference between an engaged or churned customer. Databricks empowers marketers of all technical skill levels through self-serve access to real-time insights using AI/BI Genie. Often, insights happen on the front line, but decisions happen at a leadership level. Self-serve access to insights can empower front line marketers to make more informed decisions, while leadership can more closely track progress and thereby give more independent decision making power to front line marketers. As a result, we see Databricks enabling both technical and non-technical marketers to make data-driven decisions, optimize campaigns in-flight, and personalize customer journeys effectively.

 

When marketers operate from a single source of truth that unifies customer and campaign data, the operational efficiencies are transformative. An integrated marketing data platform can break down silos across disparate systems, such as CRM, ad platforms, analytics, and content management, to enable consistent metrics and identifiers across channels. This unified data foundation eliminates delays caused by fragmented or inconsistent data, allowing marketers to trace and optimize customer journeys end-to-end with confidence. For example, since utilizing the Data Intelligence Platform, HSBC has seen a rapid increase in the speed at which they have data available for analysis,  and has  a number of jobs that used to take 6 hours and now take only 6 seconds.

 

One of the most critical challenges for marketers is getting a complete view of their customers and campaigns, because their data is scattered across different systems–and fragmented data leads to incomplete insights and reactive marketing. Building from a unified customer and campaign source of truth is no longer a nice to have, but necessary to compete and win in today’s data-driven business environment. Databricks unifies disparate data sources into a single source of truth, and then seamlessly integrates out-of-the-box with leading martech providers to empower marketers to deliver consistent, personalized experiences and measure campaign effectiveness with clarity and confidence.

 

Ultimately, any improvement seen in key metrics like click-through rates, cost-per-click, and return on ad spend help to directly validate the value of marketing data solutions. When organizations see tangible performance gains driven by data intelligence—enabled by real-time insights and AI-powered personalization—they are more likely to increase investment in these platforms to sustain competitive advantage and maximize marketing ROI.  For example, Databricks’ customer Sketchers has used the new access to data insights they’ve gained to create personalized customer journeys,  enhancing their ability to engage customers and achieve higher customer lifetime value. They’ve seen a 324% increase in click-through rates, a 68% decrease in cost-per-click, and a 28% increase in return on ad spend.

 

Over the next 3-5 years, we believe data intelligence will evolve from a supporting function to the core driver of marketing strategy across B2B and B2C organizations. Advances in AI automation, real-time and conversational analytics, and privacy-first data governance will enable marketers to anticipate customer needs, truly personalize experiences at scale, and orchestrate seamless omnichannel journeys. At Databricks, we believe in a future  where marketing decisions are data-informed, privacy-compliant, and can automatically adapt to changes in customer behavior.