Hightouch: The Data Activation Platform
Our transition from Reverse ETL to a Data Activation Platform, helping everyone take action on their data
Kashish Gupta
April 13, 2022
9 minutes
- Description: syncing data from one table to another table, and mapping columns from the source model to the destination
- Common destinations: Sales CRMs (Salesforce, Hubspot), Marketing CRMs (Braze, Iterable), Intercom, ERPs & finance tools (Netsuite and Anaplan), and 70+ more. This also includes database destinations like Postgres and --- MongoDB (for in-app personalization).
- Example Use Case: Sync product engagement data from the warehouse into Salesforce. Sales needs to see how much a customer has consumed and which features they’ve interacted with so that they can sell the right features and limits.
- Description: syncing event data into destinations that allow analysis or action on events. The user selects the object on which the events are performed. Hightouch will store the timestamp of the latest event during each sync so that only newer data is pulled from the database, which speeds these syncs up considerably.
- Common destinations: Amplitude, Mixpanel, Braze events, and Iterable events
- Example Use Case: Sync purchase event data to Braze so that marketers can automatically enroll buyers of specific products in relevant email campaigns, based on the color and category of the purchased product.
- Definition: send messages to internal team members or to customers directly, triggered by data in the warehouse
- Common destinations: Slack, Mattermost, and Microsoft Teams
- Example Use Case: Any time a customer workspace surpasses the limit of the free tier, send a message in Slack tagging the relevant salesperson and notifying them that they should reach out and ask the workspace to pay (PQLs).
- Hightouch Audiences:
- Definition: Maintain a list of users in destinations that have audience lists. Both create users as they enter the audience, and delete users as they leave the audience.
- Common destinations: Facebook Audiences, Google Ads, Bing, Tik Tok, Snapchat, Mailchimp, Sendgrid, SFMC
- Example Use Case: When someone fills out a coupon form and enters their email address, upload their email to a Facebook, Google, and Tik Tok audience so that they receive ads about products they’re interested in. When they purchase a product, remove them from all three audiences.
- File Uploads:
- Definition: Download the results of a query as a file, and upload the file to an external storage bucket. That storage bucket could be internal-facing or client-facing.
- Common Destinations: SFTP, S3
- Example: Clients run ads on an advertising platform. The identities of clicking users are stored in the advertising platform’s data warehouse and shared with the clients via SFTP.
- Tasks:
- Definition: Automatically create tickets or tasks based on rules defined by a SQL query or model. Only create that ticket or task once for each user, even if the action is performed twice. Currently, this framework fits under ORM, but it may be split out.
- Common Destinations: Asana, Jira, Zendesk, Salesforce
- Example Use Case: Query workspaces that just graduated from 4 users to 5 users (PQL). Automatically create a task in the helpdesk tool (Jira or Zendesk) so that a support rep can reach out to the workspace and ask if they need help setting up any premium features.
Each customer of Hightouch uses the product in a different way, and the majority eventually graduate to doing more than Reverse ETL:
- Vendr automates customer touchpoints
- Compare Club reduced cost per lead by 10%
- Retool increased email response rates by 32%.
- Circle CI activates dbt models to measure ROI
- Blend reduced reporting time by 50%
- Nando’s improves customer loyalty & reduces data integration time by 75%
Data Activation is Powered by Reverse ETL
Our team is still building Reverse ETL, but only for a subset of use cases, and the term is only meaningful to a select group of people. Today nearly every Hightouch customer is using the platform to power Data Activation, and that is what Hightouch will be known for.
Our Data Activation Platform is powered by our core technology, Reverse ETL. We will continue to use the term Reverse ETL to describe our technology as its core operation under the hood, but Data Activation embodies the complete scope of the variety of data problems we solve. Data Activation is why customers are jumping up and down about Hightouch, and we’re excited to embrace that!
Data Activation Will Require New Interfaces
Hightouch’s vision is to build different interfaces on the warehouse to accomplish different use cases for different personas. Over time, we want to be responsible for all Data Activation from the warehouse, regardless of whether that requires moving the data, caching it, or building interfaces on top of it directly. Different vertical use cases deserve new interfaces in our app, Hightouch Audiences being the first of those, but with many more to come.
If this work seems interesting to you, we are rapidly expanding our team! Please shoot us a note at hello@hightouch.com or check out our careers page here. And if you think Hightouch can be used at your company don’t hesitate to reach out or sign up for free!
