Actionable data sits at the heart of everything Australian marketing technology company ECAL does.  The company ingests events data from a range of publishers, then enriches this with smart logic to syncs these events of interest directly into a user’s personal electronic calendar.

Data feeds include information about everything from sports, concerts, and broadcasting to banking, finance, and education. It’s a way for marketers to avoid cluttered inboxes and grab the attention of users in a less intrusive way. Users can also interact with the calendar entries to access further information, drive tune-in, engage with brands, or purchase tickets or various other products.

As a result of its activities and service, ECAL generates a massive amount of information about end users, their preferences, and their activities. Using this data to further improve customer relationships and drive business outcomes for its clients is a top priority.

Leveraging a Scalable Platform

In early 2020, ECAL was capturing some 15 billion data points every month and its existing platform was struggling to cope. The company realized it needed to find a more robust and scalable data warehouse to support its activity and growth. 

After examining a range of options, a decision was made in mid-2020 to deploy Snowflake. And just two months later, the new platform was operational and ingesting data.

According to Patrick Barrett, Founder and CEO at ECAL, “We’re now using Snowflake to create custom dashboards for customers, which provide them with detailed insights and data visualization.” Clients can obtain a view of user activity and behavioral metrics. Now, with machine learning applied, they can also access performance value metrics such as engagement scores, purchase intent, and product awareness. These insights can be used to augment their single customer view, and further tailor marketing campaigns to increase end results.

As a result of these Snowflake-powered offerings, ECAL has achieved an increase in annual client fees of between 20% and 30% from data participating clients. During the next year, the company anticipates up to half of its client base will be making use of these new products.

Delivering a Competitive Advantage 

Snowflake has delivered a real competitive advantage to ECAL by enabling the company to handle large amounts of data while also extracting insights of value to the company’s clients. This has allowed ECAL to remain at the forefront of the global calendar marketing and communications business.

“Snowflake also allows ECAL to continue to remain innovative and take advantage of new opportunities as they arise. This is important for the company, as it is determined to remain the most advanced and sophisticated calendar marketing and communications platform on the market.”

—Patrick Barrett, Founder and CEO, ECAL

A fundamental component of this activity is the ability to understand the decision-making and purchasing behavior of users. The rich streams of data captured within Snowflake allow the company to gain insights into everything from buying a ticket or paying a bill to live streaming a football game.

This data is also of value to other organizations, and ECAL is well placed to use Snowflake to share de-identified, anonymous records with a range of strategic partners who are keen to achieve a better understanding of their own customers. 

Ensuring a Future of Growth

With Snowflake underpinning its activity, ECAL is looking forward to ongoing future growth. The company is continuously looking at ways it can extend the capabilities of its calendar marketing offering with the addition of extra services.

Recently, ECAL launched its own digital payments wallet and ID enrichment feature, Hyper. Clients can now deliver a hyper-personalised product or offer into the user calendar (based on any attribute such as location, preferences, Engagement Score etc.), with a link that enables the user to make a fast and frictionless purchase, straight from their calendar.  

“Data is reshaping the ecommerce industry, and Snowflake helps us use data to unlock new doors of innovation and value for clients and users alike.”

—Patrick Barrett, Founder and CEO, ECAL