In today’s Friday Feature Focus, we focus on something that isn’t technically a feature at all of the Skai platform, but is incredibly valuable to marketers. One of the overall benefits of being a Skai client is our flexibility to enable advertising ecosystem integrations and build connections to disparate data sources.
Very few things frustrate digital marketers more than when their tools don’t work together. No one wants to spend all weekend merging spreadsheets—or worse, not be able to get data in or out of their core marketing platform.
If you head over to the Skai partners page, you’ll see that Skai has over 100+ partner integrations already completed with popular marketing technology such as Google Analytics. Datalogix, and SalesForce.
Marketing technology integrations
- Conversions & revenue data
- Audience data
- Data output into reporting and attribution
- Automating campaign signals
But having out-of-the-box integrations is just the tip of the iceberg. The real strength of Skai’s integration offering is the ability to connect to just about any partner that a client needs to successfully manage their Search, Social, and Ecommerce advertising. This includes third-party technology vendors but also often proprietary, home-grown solutions that are crucial to a marketing organization’s workflow.
“Technology integrations is a two-fold problem,” says Skai’s VP Technology Services, Gal Zohar. “You need both technical flexibility and a team with the experience and expertise to not just execute the integration, but have the business acumen to understand what the marketer is trying to accomplish and go above-and-beyond their expectations.
“This stuff isn’t easy. The industry standard is to either charge clients a lot to do custom integrations or simply to avoid the problem and not do them at all. We know that marketers simply cannot work with siloed tools—especially their core campaign management hub like Skai.”
An open framework is key to Skai integrations
The technical hurdles of integration can be incredibly challenging, but Skai’s platform is purpose-built to provide the best starting point for external connections.
“Skai’s open framework is the key to universally solving the technical puzzle of integrations,” says Rich Wylie, Director, Technical Account Management. “The wrong way to build a true integrations practice is to build a specific toolset for Google Analytics, then another for IBM, then another Neustar, and so forth. Our platform’s open framework gives us the flexibility to quickly standardize integrations with our clients’ partners or proprietary solutions.”
What can actually be more limiting than technical challenges is the knowledge gap.
Expertise is very crucial and an integration team has to have the technical experience and a head for marketing. Sometimes the marketers themselves don’t truly understand all of the ins-and-outs of the integration so having an experienced Skai integration team can make the difference. Leading the project with both the clients and the integration partner is often required.
“Part of our process for onboarding new customers is to work together to scope, design, and configure integrations,” says Stephanie Herndon, Director of Onboarding. “Our team has an average industry experience of six years and an average Skai experience of three years. We generally pull from the best and brightest of Skai veterans because they’re most equipped to give recommendations on how integrations can work best within our platform.”
Having an integration issue with your marketing hub?
Check out our existing 100+ integrations with leading marketing technology vendors or contact Skai today to see how we can help with your custom integration needs.