Why You Need a Segment CDP Owner for Results & Accountability

What is a Segment CDP Owner, and how can hiring an agency in this role drive results and accountability for your business?

Companies adopting CDPs like the Segment Customer Data Platform
often need a hybrid role to bridge technical and business requirements.

Defining a dedicated Segment CDP Owner can help clarify your goals, manage technical needs, and align multiple departments.

For large enterprises with complex integrations, one person may not be enough, and a dedicated team might be required.

In smaller organizations with fewer data sources, a full-time Segment Owner might be unnecessary.

Many companies find it cost-effective to bring in experts for the initial setup and then switch to an admin for day-to-day maintenance.

Strategic decisions and smooth initial implementation often require a high level of expertise, while less specialized admins can manage routine maintenance.

Some companies reduce long-term costs by reserving highly skilled (and highly paid) professionals for major architecture or strategy updates only.

McGaw has extensive experience guiding clients through Segment implementations. We’ve identified common pitfalls and developed strategies that deliver huge ROI to our clients.

This article explores the different types of Segment Owners, outlining the pros and cons of each model to help you decide which option best fits your business’s size, complexity, and goals.

Key Takeaways

• A Segment CDP Owner helps translate business objectives into technical requirements across departments.
• Assign a champion with CDP experience to align all stakeholders from the start. If you don’t have internal expertise, consider external consultants.
• Define clear processes to maintain your CDP. Plan how you will update documentation when adding new platforms.
• Ask each stakeholder for their success criteria. For example: “Build audiences by lead stage” or “Restrict PII in downstream platforms.”
• Be transparent about your overall goals, so every team member is on the same page.

The Main Reason Most Segment Implementations Fail

Most Segment implementations fail because no one person owns and maintains the CDP. Larger organizations often assign this responsibility to a Marketing Operations or technology team. Smaller enterprises might rely on a single individual to update documentation and handle requests from other departments.

Maintaining a CDP requires different skills than those needed for the initial implementation. First, hire experts to establish the core data flows and processes. Then, train your team and transition into long-term maintenance.

By defining clear ownership of the CDP during your Segment implementation, you can greatly increase ROI. In fact, Aberdeen’s research shows that optimized Segment implementations can drive 2.9x year-over-year revenue growth.

Who Should Be Your Segment CDP Owner?

A Segment owner should be a solutions architect who understands your business needs. They must know your technical infrastructure and how Segment connects to each tool to drive real business value.

Your Segment Owner doesn’t need the “solutions architect” title, but they should have similar skills. To keep your CDP working well and adding value.

Bring in experts to set up your CDP correctly the first time. Re-doing it later costs more and slows you down.

Who will handle the CDP’s ongoing processes and ensure it keeps driving value?

Some common roles include:

• Product Manager
• Technical Marketer
• Engineer
• External Agency

Segment CDP Owner Responsibilities

A Segment Owner identifies key risks and opportunities. They:

• Communicate and align value opportunities across teams
• Understand how Segment and its integrations add value
• Lead customization efforts, so Segment meets your organization’s needs

This post focuses on how to communicate and align these opportunities among your internal teams.

No matter who takes on this role, rely on experienced guidance to avoid integration pitfalls. Then, train your team to fully leverage your CDP and unlock your product and marketing use cases.

Who Are the Key Stakeholders Across the Organization

Segment affects multiple teams, so start by aligning expectations across every department it touches. Identify your key stakeholders early and get them in the same room. Each business is different, so consider bringing in experienced help for a successful rollout.

If you don’t have representatives across departments in your Segment discussions, STOP!

You must have a coordinated plan to roll out Segment or you will not achieve the return on investment you are hoping for. So who are the common stakeholders?

A Segment implementation will often intersect with the following teams:

• Engineering
• IT
• Infosec
• Marketing
• Product

It is critical that you identify what teams should be represented when making data infrastructure decisions as early in the process as possible. After everyone is at the table, you need a communication strategy to make those meetings effective.

How Do You Communicate with Each Stakeholder

Each team has different needs. The key will be to understand the common priorities different teams will have going into the internal conversation.

For instance, some companies will need to have further talks to identify and mitigate legal and security concerns, especially in industries that require HIPAA compliance.

Companies that operate in the European Union will need to factor in GDPR. Privacy should be brought up early to understand what restrictions your legal and security teams need across all data sources and destinations.

Without the right guidance, you’re more likely to miss opportunities and run into issues that could lead to costly rework.

Save yourself the headache.

Bring in experts to navigate these early (but critical) conversations. This is where working with an agency (like ours) can save you time and money and drive better business results.

Here are some questions and concerns that each team may raise during a Segment implementation discussion:

Engineering

• How much support will you need from engineering to maintain this tool?
• Will this reduce engineering hours needed to support the downstream destinations?

These are common questions you might hear from the software engineers who are tasked to evaluate and eventually support a CDP. What you need to know is what destinations will ingest data from Segment, and whether those destinations have native integrations with Segment.

If a tool does not have a native integration, it can most likely still be integrated, but it will require more engineering support.

IT 

• Who will have access to this tool?
• What permissions are needed? What sensitive data is shared?

IT will want to know how much they will need to manage access and permissions, and they may have crossover with Risk/Security on things like sensitive data.

Fortunately, Segment has robust tools to manage access including SSO support, plus data sanitation options to ensure sensitive data is handled properly.

You need to audit and document what data your company would need to send through Segment, and line that up with your internal policies on transferring data to 3rd party tools.

Infosec

• Will we be sending PII into this tool?
• How do we handle a data deletion request?
• How can we be sure this is GDPR-compliant?
• What are their HIPAA compliance policies?

Information security is often one of the toughest hurdles in onboarding a new technology, particularly one as huge and impactful as a CDP. It is critical that you meet with this team, understand ALL of their concerns, and address them one by one.

You will save yourself a lot of time and stress by documenting security requirements ahead of time and establishing clear guidelines for how data will be integrated into the CDP.

Marketing

• How will this integrate into our existing marketing platforms?
• Can we sync audiences from our CRM?
• Will lead stages and scoring be integrated?
• How does this enable us to do things we can’t already do?

Marketing teams tend to be very story-driven. You will get a lot more engagement if you tell a story of how their activities will change (and hopefully improve!) after onboarding Segment.

To do that, align marketing’s current KPIs and goals with key functionalities of the CDP. Set goals on how you will measure success, so the team is aligned and excited to make progress.

Product

• Will we be able to track X behavior now?
• How will user profiles work?
• Can we use this data in X analytics platform?

Product teams tend to be very data-driven and want to get to where they can gain insight and take action. Segment can definitely power up customer profiles and supercharge data in the data warehouse and event-based analytics platforms.

When you meet with the product team, ask them what the gaps are in their user tracking today. Build your Segment implementation plan to include improvement on those data gaps, and you will without a doubt be a hero to the product team.

Common Pitfalls to Avoid when Implementing Segment

A CDP touches virtually every department, which makes it easy to overlook accountability and see things slip through the cracks. There is always risk when onboarding a new tool, and Segment is no exception.

1. DON’T silo the decision-making process.

Your team is excited, you have executive buy-in, and you are pushing the project forward to the next steps.  Maybe you’re the visionary leader on a team that is ready to push the company forward to the next level, great work.

For everyone else, listen up.

If other departments are giving you the cold shoulder, do not bypass them at this stage. Trying to align multiple stakeholders after purchase is a huge mistake, and it will slow down your implementation and potentially prevent you from getting the full ROI you know you can achieve.

Bringing in a third-party consultant can help provide an unbiased opinion to those internal conversations.

Ask questions to understand the other teams’ concerns, and use the value to the business as a way to align everyone to the company’s vision.

2. DON’T wait to set a Segment Owner.

Failure to set a clear owner at the beginning leads to an underutilized or failed implementation. We’ve done hundreds of these, and it’s proven time and time again that failure to set an owner is a mistake.

3. DON’T wait to document your implementation.

After agreeing on your CDP owner and designating responsibilities, make sure those responsibilities include documenting your unique configurations and project history.

It can be tough to find someone with the business knowledge, technical savvy, and communication skills to understand and document the needs of every team impacted by a CDP. The documentation should be thorough enough that others can understand and follow the process.

In future posts, we will cover the next steps after your business is aligned on how you are going to use a CDP. The question C-Suite will be asking is most likely, “How are we going to get ROI on this purchase?” We’ll cover that topic in a future post.

In-house or agency?

When it comes to implementing a Customer Data Platform (CDP) like Segment, the question of who should manage it often arises: an in-house employee or an external agency?

While hiring internally might seem cost-effective initially, partnering with an agency specializing in CDP implementation offers distinct advantages.

Agencies bring a wealth of experience to the table.

Teams like ours consist of experts with a deep understanding of CDP best practices and a proven track record of successful implementations. This knowledge translates into faster deployment, advanced troubleshooting, and optimized CDP and tech stack configurations from the start.

Choosing a Flexible Segment Owner for Growth

An internal hire might have the skills, but they probably already have a ton on their plates, and will face a steep learning curve that can slow down your implementation and increase the risk of expensive mistakes.

Another benefit of agencies is that they can provide support across multiple areas and handle complex integrations. They can also scale to more easily meet your changing and growing needs.

Choosing to hire an in-house Segment Owner might seem like a straightforward solution, but it can come with its own set of challenges. They may face limitations in skills or simply have too much on their plate, which can slow down your CDP’s growth as your business grows.

While choice ultimately comes down to your needs and budget, partnering with a Segment partner and tech stack agency often provides greater long-term benefits than the initial savings of bringing someone on board internally.