Carhartt and the Value of "Unseen" Data Integrity

Carhartt partnered with Claravine in 2018 to implement a complete overhaul of data management and processing for their digital marketing efforts. By progressively rolling out data standards across marketing strategies, the analytics team, led by Andrew Laycock, was able to quickly improve campaign tracking for all teams. Using The Data Standards Cloud to implement a data management strategy, Carhartt enforced consistency across external and internal campaigns — ultimately allowing the analytics team to more quickly pull reports, conclude insights, and give strategic recommendations to leadership.

The thing with data integrity is…you want it to be unseen. When data is corrupt the business is aware of it, but when data is correct and has integrity, the business doesn’t necessarily see data, they see the story.

The Challenge: Excel Tracking That Couldn’t Scale

As a Data Product Manager of consumer data (now the Analytics Manager for Direct to Consumer), Andrew Laycock’s role was crucial to driving the strategy around consumer data: knowing what consumer information is collected, how it’s collected, how it’s processed, and ultimately what insights can be pulled from the data to make decisions that drive the Carhartt business forward.

There are thousands of moving pieces, with each marketing team responsible for driving their own strategy, content, implementation, and partnership with outside influencers and agencies. The analytics team is the downstream recipient of campaign data codes and attribution models, and is responsible for making sense of the inputs.

Prior to seeking a data integrity solution, Carhartt’s marketing teams were manually tracking campaign metadata and tracking codes in complicated Excel files. The analytics team worked to develop a rigid plan for campaign code structures, plus outlines for when and how to use the Excel sheets per team. They also automated macros and rules to help prevent or highlight mistakes. Unfortunately, it quickly proved to not be scalable for a growing company, and inevitably each month there were errors and typos.

…it was always an uphill battle for people to have the latest Excel version, follow the rules and replicate that campaign after campaign.

Spending more time each week wrangling data and piecing together all the correct data points, instead of telling the story of the customers’ journey, “was making all marketing channels look bad”. Without accurate and defined variables in each campaign, the analytics team was unable to answer mission-critical business questions or make recommendations on where to invest or divest.

The Solution: One Team at a Time, Over the Span of a Year

“For us, choosing Claravine was about consistency so we could continue to scale,” says Andrew. As they brought on new team members, The Data Standards Cloud allowed the team to standardize a process and set up the tools and resources that new team members need to know on day one. And when testing new channels or new mediums — “QR codes are becoming hot in retail stores again” — it was easy to define the process and get going with Claravine because there is already a flow in place.

Carhartt rolled out Claravine with a progressive approach, one team at a time, over the span of a year. Individual marketing channels quickly saw the value of The Data Standards Cloud once they were able to easily save and edit campaign details in a centralized space. The newly defined process automatically organized and structured data to create a fool-proof tracking system, changing the dynamic for collaborations and teams’ ability to accurately measure within a campaign timeframe. The platform has also created a space for Carhartt’s content team to track assets, which allows them to measure the velocity of different assets on the website — something they had not been able to do before.

The Results: From “Data Is the Problem” to “Data Is the Solution”

Carhartt has achieved 100% data compliance and comprehensive visibility into all their campaigns. This level of oversight has enabled them to export email data for further in-depth analysis, and the implementation of The Data Standards Cloud has supercharged the brand’s personalization efforts and customer journey tools. Carhartt has significantly slashed the time required to make critical decisions from weeks to hours: the analytics team can now swiftly extract reports and insights and provide strategic recommendations to leadership, facilitating agility in their response to market dynamics.

With The Data Standards Cloud, the team is now equipped to quickly make strategic recommendations based on accurate data — recognized as strategic partners who help drive the business forward with deep insights, solutions, and new ideas.

About Andrew Laycock

Andrew Laycock is an Analytics Manager for Direct to Consumer at Carhartt, focused on maintaining a high level of data integrity for Carhartt’s consumer data. He is passionate about implementing systems and processes that provide accurate, actionable insights for better business decisions. Having led the implementation of Claravine’s platform at Carhartt, Andrew has significantly enhanced the reporting capabilities for other teams, and it now saves his team over a week’s worth of error maintenance per month. His dedication to creating a standardized approach for data management and storytelling is what highlights him as a noted thought leader in the future of digital marketing.