mParticle Founder on Product Design (Part 3)
Customer data usage is a hot topic. For example, the recent Facebook scandal with Cambridge Analytica and other data-hacking cases around the world. These cases force companies and customers to think differently about how data usage affects our daily lives.
When you look at product design, data is best used to play offense by developing more effective marketing. In addition, data enhances the user experience through access to better insights from your customers. But you also need to be mindful of playing defense with data, because providing more personalization to your customers can also affect their privacy.
We tend to be reactive when it comes to using data effectively. This begins with the ways in which we normally solve problems. For example, if an app is crashing, the developer would look for a new crash reporting tool. Conversely, if your users are not engaging, the marketing team can launch a re-marketing strategy or increase push notifications.
This works to a certain extent. However, you don’t get a deep understanding of the problem that you’re trying to solve without data. Our job as a customer data platform is to get people to step back and be more thoughtful about using data. In the end, we want data to make a difference in developing products that connect with more people.
We help people identify data points that are mapping to key business activities. Furthermore, we deliver consolidated data for marketing, product and analytics teams. As part of our data analysis, we also have controls for privacy and consent. As a result, we can ensure that “opt-out” users can have their data removed and protect their privacy.
About the speaker
Michael Katz is the Co-Founder and CEO of mParticle. Under Michael’s leadership, mParticle has become one of the leading mobile data solutions in the world. Prior to launching mParticle, Michael launched Interclick - which was acquired by Yahoo in 2011 and served as its VP of Analytics and Optimization.