Video: 10 Minute IT Jams - An update from Amperity with Billy Loizou

Data is power. But for many companies in the Asia-Pacific region, transforming a flood of customer information into actionable insights remains a formidable challenge. On this week's episode of Terminate IT Jams, Billy Lisu, Area Vice President for APAC at Amperity, offered a candid look at how brands are embracing sophisticated data tools to drive smarter business outcomes while grappling with the growing complexities of privacy and compliance.

Amperity, a specialist in customer data platforms (CDP), helps companies "create customer data confidence across their entire business from marketing all the way through to IT," Lisu explained. "We're trying to make them really good friends - we are the platform for customer data businesses which are drowning in data, starving for insights in a cluttered CDP space."

At the heart of this push is the drive to cut through "buzzwords and jargon," Lisu said, offering a straightforward mission: to give brands the means to truly know their customers and, in doing so, unlock growth. "We believe an accurate, unified view of your first-party data lets you acquire more customers, boost retention, stay compliant and grow revenue," he explained.

The importance of reliable customer data resonates at the highest levels. "If we're sitting at a boardroom today, the three most important metrics are net profit, cost of customer acquisition and net revenue retention - and you can't accurately calculate those without customer data," he said. Amperity claims to distinguish itself in the crowded CDP market through a patented probabilistic identity resolution capability, which, Lisu said, grants businesses "the most accurate unified customer profiles."

Traditional systems, he noted, often rely on simple matches such as connecting an email address to a transaction. But, he warned, "Your customer doesn't always go into a store or engage with you online with the same identifier." Instead, Amperity's machine learning-driven approach uncovers hidden patterns, processing millions of customer records in minutes "to give you that accurate view." The result, Lisu said, is a dramatic improvement in how companies "acquire high-value customers and reduce churn. So if data quality and accuracy is important to you as a business, Amperity is the right platform."

Company-wide value

For real-world impact, Lisu pointed to the example of Brooks Running, a global footwear brand operating in a fiercely competitive retail space. Brooks, he explained, wanted to empower its marketing, customer service and analytics teams with actionable data. "By positioning Amperity at the centre of their tech stack, the team at Brooks created a customer 360 - they call it the Runner 360 - that could be used and democratised across the entire enterprise," he explained. "By applying Amperity insights to their digital marketing efforts, they were able to create different audience segments, run tests within their communications and use personalisation to put their best foot forward."

The results, Lisu claimed, were impressive. "The results for companies like Brooks was increased engagement metrics on an average of 150% using that first-party data, which then led to an increase and improvement in return on ad spend over 128%, and conversions from social by up to 48%," he said.

Practical benefits underpin Amperity's pitch: "You don't need to be a SQL expert to use it - it's click, drag, drop and you can get a segment with some insights to be able to act on immediately." According to Lisu, the company benchmarks its platform with four key outcomes: "How do we help you make money, drive revenue online and in-store, save money, optimise your ad spend and reduce marketing costs, save time by democratising data and help that data pipeline, and lastly, the most important in Australia right now, reduce risk - making sure your privacy and compliance governance metrics and standards are up to scratch."

Privacy on the frontline

The conversation soon turned to the latest trends driving customer data management. Unsurprisingly, privacy and compliance topped the agenda. "One that's front of mind right now in particular in Australia is the Australian Privacy Principles," Lisu said. "With the introduction of GDPR in Europe and the CCPA in California, over the last 24 months there's been quite a lot of high-profile data breaches, and customers are becoming a little bit more aware post-COVID as to how their data is being used."

Compliance, he argued, is no longer optional, nor is it limited to one geography. "With the introduction of the Privacy Principles - and mind you, this is not Australia-specific, this is going to be global, it's just a matter of time - businesses, especially IT, are trying to figure out: how do we create that most accurate view but how do we make sure it's governed and compliant?"

Increasingly, customers expect brands not merely to own their data, but to become custodians of it. "When Billy does come up and say 'I need a data deletion request or show me the data that I have' - which is becoming common vernacular - companies need to make sure that they're now custodians of that customer data, not owners, and meet that request to be able to serve the customer," he said.

Composability and cost control

As privacy becomes more stringent, businesses are also wrestling with technical flexibility. "Building with composability in mind - tech debt is a common theme, we've invested lots of money in stacks, and how do we now evolve that stack and build with best-of-breed components?" Lisu added that Amperity aims to fit "quite nicely into your ecosystem, hence our logo being an ampersand, 'Better Together' is that kind of narrative."

Apart from compliance and composability, profitability remains a top concern. "Profitable acquisition: it's understanding how to acquire more high-value customers, and those customers are going to engage more with you," he said. The imminent demise of third-party cookies has only heightened the pressure: "You can't rely on third-party tags, you need to build your first-party data asset in order to match with those downstream paid media systems."

Waste reduction is more urgent now amid economic headwinds. "Advertisers threw away, I think it was 5.46 billion of digital ad spend budgets in 2022," Lisu noted. "If IT are trying to find a way to help their business be a bit smarter as to how they target customers, then knowing who your customer is and targeting the right customers - not the same customers over and over again - you're going to reduce your wastage."

Bringing it all together, Lisu stressed that the business case is stronger than ever. "Spin it, it definitely speaks for itself, doesn't it, that that large a number?" he said.

Asked how brands should start their journey, Lisu kept it simple. "Otherwise, hit me up on LinkedIn, always happy to chat."