Datorma - business intelligence platform for marketers

Datorma - business intelligence platform for marketers

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By Janet Brice
Datorama’s connected platform and extensive ecosystem combines to optimise marketing for global brands...

Marketers are always looking at ways to improve the impact of their campaigns which is why more are turning to Datorama who offer a precision-driven platform to drive sales.

Created a decade ago ‘by marketing professionals for marketers’ seeking to gain a competitive edge - especially in today’s commercial landscape shaped by the Covid-19 pandemic - Datorma is the leading cloud-based, AI-powered marketing intelligence and analytics platform for enterprises, agencies and publishers. 

Datorama is the only intelligence platform that helps marketers connect all of their data, uncover deep marketing insights and better understand campaign performance. Their customers can create, distribute and access powerful marketing analytics apps with speed and ease. 

“Our goal for the past 10 years is being able to help our customers automate their data and digital insights to transform their business,” said Boaz Ram, Head of Technology Partnerships at Datorama.

Founded in 2012 in Tel Aviv, Datorama was acquired by Salesforce for a reported $800 million in 2018.The high-profile purchase promised marketers, ‘one unified view of data and insights… to optimise engagement at scale.”

Datorama enables more than 3,000 leading global agencies and brands - including PepsiCo, Ticketmaster, Trivago, Unilever, Pernod Ricard and Foursquare - to optimise marketing campaigns, automate reporting and make data-driven decisions faster.

Datorama marketplace

The Datorama marketplace extends the power of the California-based company’s marketing intelligence capabilities by enabling developers to create custom apps that marketers can discover and use on their platform. 

The marketplace features pre-built apps from partners, like Xandr, Brandwatch and Pinterest which helps to improve marketing analytics and democratising them.

Ram said that Datorama set out to simplify the process for marketers who have more than 3,0000 platforms to choose from. “Every one of them has their own data set, usually they work in silos and then it becomes extremely hard for marketers to understand. There is too much data to choose from and how they impact on each other, what's the return on investment (ROI) or the efficacy of a specific campaign,” he said.

“So that's what Datorma is built for. The purpose is to help marketers ingest all these different data sources from all these faces, all these platforms into a single coherent data model. It drives insights and reports and dashboards into cross channel real time insights which helps optimise their marketing.”

Artificial Intelligence (AI) gives Datorma the power to drive the marketing platform giving it a competitive edge as it is able to map, model and harmonise data. This enables it to make smarter decisions for clients.

“We are built by marketers for marketers, and we understand marketing - other platforms are more generic. That means we have a model that is structured for marketing,” commented Ram. 

He pointed out AI-driven technology allows Datorama to look at data and highlights different aspects that can help customers optimise their data. “These insights can advise a marketer on the best regions or times to run their campaigns for a better ROI.”

Value of ecosystems

Ram emphasises the importance of ecosystems to Datorma comparing their successful business model to how Apple evolved their iPhone.

“Ecosystem is my favorite subject. I like to use the iPhone analogy. When the iPhone was launched in 2007 it did not have an app store. When it came out, it was just a smarter phone,” he said.

“Although it introduced the internet to the palm of your hand, it couldn't extend its capability to do other things. The app store only came out in the third generation of the iPhone, which was 2009.

“Think about how we use the smartphone today - very little for actual phone calls or texting and more for banking or shopping which comes from other vendors and partners that built apps for the iPhone.

“And that's really the concept of Datorama’s ecosystem. It's basically to democratise the platform and help our partners and customers build solutions, using our technology and really expand the capabilities and the breadth of the solutions that we have beyond what we thought was possible.”

Ram said that although Datorma has an “awesome engineering and product team” they're limited in resources. “Partners that can think beyond our spend and resources and expand the capabilities of the platform to help our customers leverage their solutions - so that's the power.”

Datorma has an app with Brandwatch which allows marketers to understand the reach of paid campaigns, not just organic, which is a major benefit for anyone on social media.

“We have an ecosystem of consulting partners and system integrators, like Accenture and Deloitte and smaller companies like Nabler and AARIN, which help us sell Datorama as an extension of our sales and customer service teams which will help us scale. And that's something that we've expanded and learned a lot. 

Solutions for ecommerce

The restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic from remote working and lockdowns has seen marketers turning to Datorama to focus their online sales.

“Everyone's turning to ecommerce and now there's a need for a lot of website analytics, a lot of ecommerce solutions and integrations with ecommerce sites like Shopify, Amazon and Walmart,” said Ram.

“A lot of the things that we saw happening in small steps during the past eight years really accelerated in a way that no one thought was possible during the first eight months of the pandemic. I think ecommerce will stay and grow stronger.”

Salesforce acquisition

When Salesforce acquired Datorama three years ago it opened up global markets and took it to the next level. “It brought in massive scale to roll into the Salesforce machine and that changes a lot of our processes,” commented Ram.

“We've grown in size with the acquisition and in relation to the global resources open to us. Salesforce is an amazing company to work - as I think, it has the right heart in place - especially with its involvement in philanthropy.”

Looking ahead, Ram says the proliferation of marketing solutions is ever-changing. “It's a very dynamic industry, Apple recently announced that, as part of the iOS 14 update, it will be giving users the choice to block the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) identifier at the app level. 

“This is going to kill the option to track campaigns using their Apple phones. And that's a major change in the industry.”

According to reports, Apple has taken the strategic stance that privacy is a user right and is currently taking steps to grant users more ability to opt-out of any type of targeting or tracking the change is expected to occur across Apple’s entire product portfolio.

IDFA is a unique identifier for mobile devices and is used to target and measure the effectiveness of advertising on a user level across mobile devices.

Looking ahead how technology will shape the industry in the near future, Ram predicts cryptocurrency will take off - not just as a speculative financial tool - but as an actual currency to be used in retail and marketing. “I think it's, it's getting to the point where it's mature enough and safe enough for some of these currencies. I'm excited to see how the GameStop drama pans out.”

Power of the Datorama developer portal

Datorama’s Marketplace includes Salesforce apps, as well as apps from customers and partners that have been built using the Datorama Developer Portal. 

These include:

  • Salesforce marketing cloud email: Offers customers interactive analytics that help benchmark and measure the effectiveness of email marketing campaigns
  • Xandr Invest essential monitoring: Identifies ad server discrepancies and surfaces KPI performance trends for marketers to optimise campaigns and budgets more effectively
  • Workspace health: Monitors data quality across every marketing source in one actionable view
  • Social intelligence: Compares brand presence for competitive insights across Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter
  • SmartLens apps: The following apps deliver improved reporting for top marketing sources by displaying KPIs, trends and instant analytics
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