Stop exporting, start acting: the benefits of a data firehose
Marketers need to see and act on customer behavior as it happens. Why? Because waiting costs you customers. It leads to irrelevant content, missed moments, and disconnected experiences. Yet valuable engagement data like clicks, opens, replies, and unsubscribes is often trapped in platform silos, waiting for manual exports. The result is stale insights, slow decisions, and missed opportunities.
What is a data firehose?
Imagine every open, click, and purchase from a campaign as tiny droplets of water. Now, picture trying to collect those droplets one bucket at a time. It’s slow, labor‑intensive, and by the time the data reaches your analytics, the moment has gone.
If you want your data while it’s still relevant, you need it flowing in a fast, continuous stream. That’s exactly what a data firehose does.
A data firehose is a direct line that sends all your campaign data straight to wherever you need it, whether that’s your cloud storage, data warehouse, or analytics tool. No waiting or chasing.
Why your data team will thank you
For data and analytics teams, a firehose means efficiency; less busywork and more impact. They set up a connection to your cloud storage once, and the data will keep flowing, reliably and securely, at a scale that can handle millions of events without breaking a sweat.
A good firehose plugs neatly into all major cloud systems, like:
- Google Cloud Storage
- Azure Blob Storage
- Amazon S3
- SFTP
Paired with an API, data can move in and out automatically without any unnecessary headaches or time delays.
Why marketers should care
For marketing teams, the biggest win is speed. When engagement data flows directly into your single source of truth alongside sales, customer behavior, and other key data, you can see what actually resonates while there’s time to do something about it.
That means you can:
- Adjust and improve campaigns while they’re live
- Target smarter using the most up‑to‑date information
- Prove campaign ROI more easily
With a firehose, tech teams get dependable, scalable data delivery. Marketers get insights they can act on right now. Nobody’s wasting hours passing files back and forth, and the whole business moves faster because decisions keep pace with customer actions.
The big picture for your business
When the team brings in new technologies, leadership will want to know how it connects with existing tech.
That’s where a data firehose shifts from a “nice to have” to a non-negotiable. It helps teams work from the same up-to-date view of customer actions, so leaders can:
- Make confident decisions faster
- Spot opportunities before competitors do
- Respond to risks before they escalate
By breaking down silos across marketing, sales, customer service, data, and operations, a firehose creates real agility. This lets you act on a trend instead of watching a competitor run away with it. And because it connects to your existing infrastructure, you get that agility without costly re‑platforming or disruptive process changes.
Closing the data loop with your data warehouse
A data firehose is brilliant at getting raw engagement data out of Dotdigital and into storage, but that’s only half the story.
Once the data’s in your warehouse, teams can combine it with sales history, website behaviour, product usage, and support calls. And here’s where the loop closes.
When your marketing tech integrates with your data warehouse like Snowflake or BigQuery, those richer insights can flow back in. Suddenly, marketers have smarter segments, sharper targeting, and the data to create personalization that actually feels relevant.
Imagine your campaign data streams into Snowflake via Firehose. Analysts connect to purchase frequency and product preferences, then send those segments back into your marketing automation platform. From there, you launch ultra‑timely, hyper‑relevant campaigns.
In short, Firehose gets data out fast for deeper analysis. Warehouse integrations like Snowflake bring insights back so you can act. It’s a closed loop between marketing and data with benefits for the whole business.
Send firehose data anywhere with Dotdigital
Dotdigital’s data firehose streams marketing engagement data straight to Google Cloud Storage, Azure Blob Storage, Amazon S3, or SFTP without needing special workarounds. And to close the loop, Dotdigital integrates with Snowflake and BigQuery so insights don’t get stuck on one side. Since Snowflake uses these storage options, centralizing your data has never been easier.
The bottom line is simple: your campaign data shouldn’t sit around waiting to be discovered. A data firehose moves it quickly to where it’s needed, when it’s needed, helping marketing and technical teams work in perfect sync.
