Wistia’s Composable CDP Data Stack Featuring Census, Fivetran, dbt, Mode and Redshift

In this video you’ll learn Wistia’s journey building a composable CDP and a data stack to support growth using Fivetran for ETL, dbt for transformations, Redshift as the DWH, Mode for analytics and Census for data activation.

#dataactivation #reverseetl #ETL #datawarehouse #census #fivetran #redshift #growthmarketing #customerdata #customerdataplatform

Full episode: https://humansofmartech.com/2024/02/27/108-ezra-fishman-wistias-vp-of-growth-on-healthy-data-skepticism-and-north-star-metric-limitations/

Ezra is the VP of Growth at Wistia. He was an early advocate for leveraging technology to streamline data analytics. He shares insights into his journey towards building a robust, warehouse-centric data architecture. This approach, pioneering at the time, has set a precedent for how businesses can optimize their data to drive marketing and growth effectively.

Ezra and his team were quick to recognize the advantages of centralizing their data into a warehouse vs a CRM or their automation tool like a lot of other companies were doing. By adopting Fivetran for ETL processes, they consolidated disparate data sources into a single, centralized data warehouse powered by Redshift. This foundational move was crucial, creating a single source of truth that enabled comprehensive analytics and reporting through tools like Mode Analytics. This setup served as the backbone of their Business Intelligence (BI) infrastructure, facilitating dashboard creation and data-driven decision-making.

The journey didn’t stop there. As the need to disseminate insights across various tools became evident, Census emerged as the solution to a pressing challenge: distributing organized, BI-validated data back into critical marketing and sales platforms. Incorporating dbt early on, Ezra’s team added a semantic layer to their data architecture, streamlining business rules application and making data more consumable for analytics and operational use.

Ezra’s strategic choice to prioritize data ownership and flexibility has proven prescient. This decision allowed for scalability without being constrained by the pricing models or limitations of other tools. Moreover, it afforded the freedom to manipulate and deploy data as needed, avoiding the pitfalls of dependency on proprietary platforms or schemas.

This holistic approach to data management underscores the importance of a centralized data warehouse in empowering marketing automation and CRM tools like Salesforce. It highlights the significance of not just collecting data but organizing and deploying it in a manner that enhances operational efficiency and drives growth.

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