Warner Music Group leverages Snowflake and Hightouch to “super-serve” fans, artists, and labels
Warner Music Group (WMG) is a major music company whose family of labels includes Atlantic Records, 300 Elektra Entertainment, and Warner Records. WMG’s music publishing company, Warner Chappell Music, has more than 1 million copyrights in its catalog. To provide the best experiences for fans and artists, WMG ingests and analyzes large amounts of data.
Results
- 1000+ audiences syndicated with Snowflake and Hightouch
- Billions of rows ingested into Snowflake
- Increased efficiency with streamlined audience creation and syndication
- Accelerated data-driven collaboration and innovation
- Implemented Snowflake and Hightouch within six weeks
The Challenge
Maximizing fan engagement and music discoverability across thousands of artists and numerous brands is a data-driven endeavor. Signals from web, social, and email interactions help WMG understand fan preferences and serve targeted content. “Our goal is for fans to experience the music they want, at the right frequency, and in the right channels,” Warner Music Group’s VP of Product, Audiences, and Marketing Technology, Itay Rahat, said.
Seeking to become even more data-driven and build sophisticated audiences in less time, WMG began evaluating customer data platforms. However, WMG’s consumer data team quickly pivoted and focused on modernizing its on-premises data architecture.
According to Rahat, “There was a queue of data types and formats we couldn’t support because of processing power and storage issues.” Joining data from multiple sources involved time-consuming exports and imports. Homegrown connectors were difficult to scale and inhibited audience syndication.
The Solution
Snowflake
As part of a company-wide initiative to adopt Snowflake, WMG’s consumer data team turned to the Data Cloud. Migrating WMG’s consumer data warehouse to Snowflake took less than six months and accelerated the team’s ability to support additional data types and sources.
“Ingesting data into Snowflake provided a central repository that reduced complexity at WMG and again,” Rahat said. Snowflake Secure Data Sharing enabled governed and secure data sharing with data scientists and other internal stakeholders. Supporting additional data types and sources with Snowflake provides a more complete view of WMG’s fans.
“With Snowflake, we have a powerful, flexible, supported, and secure platform that we’re really excited about.”
Itay Rahat
VP of Product, Audiences, and Marketing Technology at Warner Music Group
Achieving a scalable data environment with Snowflake makes WMG’s consumer data team even more productive and innovative. “I see a data development team that’s constantly working on Snowflake, sharing new ideas, and collaborating with marketing, technology, and other teams,” Rahat said.
Onboarding massive data sets is easier with Snowflake. For example, the team successfully loaded one large data set containing billions of rows of engagement data into Snowflake. According to Rahat, “We couldn’t bring it in before, but we can with Snowflake. That’s a big deal.”
Hightouch
Connecting Hightouch to Snowflake provided a convenient solution for audience syndication without relying on homegrown tools or third-party customer data platforms. Hightouch’s knowledgeable team worked closely with WMG to activate data stored in Snowflake.
According to Rahat, “Within six weeks, we implemented Hightouch on Snowflake and got out hundreds of audiences, which made marketers and agencies happy.” Hightouch’s knowledgeable team worked closely with WMG to activate data stored in Snowflake.
“We’re taking care of the Snowflake environment. Hightouch is syndicating the data, marketers are happy, and a lot of operational load has been taken off our chest.”
Itay Rahat
VP of Product, Audiences, and Marketing Technology at Warner Music Group
Rapidly building and syndicating hundreds of audiences with Hightouch and Snowflake helps WMG’s agencies optimize multi-channel advertising campaigns. “The ROI is about operational efficiency and giving agencies what they need at their fingertips,” Rahat said.
Understanding consumer preferences helps WMG create multi-channel connections between fans and artists by recommending relevant music, tour information, and news. Artist marketers use data in Snowflake to build targeted fan lists for engagement campaigns. Brands rely on a variety of signals to create segments that drive music discoverability
“The idea is to create connections between artists and fans, strengthen those connections over time, and give as much context as possible.”
Itay Rahat
VP of Product, Audiences, and Marketing Technology at Warner Music Group
Combining web, social, and email interactions makes it easier to identify and overcome gaps in the fan experience. According to Rahat, “Creating sophisticated audiences enables better targeting and allows us to delight customers.”
What's Next?
Ingesting more data into Snowflake will enable the team to build new audiences and support campaigns that boost engagement, reactivations, and customer loyalty. WMG is also evaluating use cases for Snowflake Marketplace and Snowflake’s data clean room capabilities in parallel with Hightouch.