Glassdoor Uses Iterable and Snowflake to Create User-Centric Communications For More Jobs Found and Loved

Since 2007 Glassdoor, a champion for workplace transparency, has supported people’s searches for jobs with companies they love. 

Initially, they shared anonymous reviews from current or former employees which helped people understand if a job and company were the right fit. As the jobs landscape evolved, Glassdoor partnered with other workplace-related brands to build B2C and B2B products that reach across 20 countries and attract 50M+ unique monthly site visitors, including millions of professionals and employers trying to find the perfect employee-employer match. 

For example, Glassdoor acquired Fishbowl, a social networking app for the workplace, and now can encourage interaction between job seekers and company employees who offer their candid, inside insights to prospects. Additionally, in partnership with Indeed, Glassdoor facilitates employer branding, giving companies forums to be transparent, share their stories, and offer perspectives on culture, salary, and more. 

These partnerships, and others, create a win-win for all—greater workplace transparency ensuring prospects find and land in the right place, fewer employee-employer communication barriers that can create workplace risks (e.g., discrimination, pay gaps, and a toxic environment), and stronger employee recruitment and retention. 

Multiple Marketing Technologies Impede User-Driven Communications

To increase its user base and overall engagement, Glassdoor wants to attract employees, employers, and job-seekers who contribute content. For example, an employer can register their company to showcase their brand and post company updates, as well as respond to reviews. An employee or candidate who’s looking for a new opportunity can contribute content by posting in forums to discuss workplace topics, get advice, and search for or post their own reviews, including their experience working for a company and current salary. “The more content employees contribute, the more information Glassdoor has, and the more data we can make available for consumption, creating value for employers and job seekers,” shared David Tjen, Director of Marketing Analytics at Glassdoor. 

Previously, they relied on two customer communication platforms: one for email communications and one for sending push notifications. Without a single platform facilitating their communications across multiple channels—from email to mobile—Glassdoor couldn’t reach users when and where their messages would be most impactful.  

They also couldn’t access critical user-centric data in a secure, centralized system, which prevented them from successfully reporting on the effectiveness of their campaigns. “We couldn’t track and manage the key data and what users did after they opened or clicked on an email or push, drilling into specifics like the actions they take on our site or within our app,” explained Tjen. This meant missed opportunities to personalize marketing campaigns and gauge what communications successfully or unsuccessfully drove customer engagement, and subsequent conversions. 

They needed one user-centric, marketing automation solution to reach and engage all users across multiple touchpoints—for both contributors and job seekers. With the Iterable-Snowflake data sharing integration, Glassdoor found a holistic way to combine campaign, business, and customer data in a secure place, track it in a way that protects any personally identifiable information (PII), and leverage it to better understand users’ activities across their internal systems. With this data, Glassdoor can create more personalized, timely communications to help job-seekers decide if an opportunity is suitable, if they want to apply or keep looking, and then act to secure the right job before it’s filled.

With access to data playing a key role for Glassdoor and the customer experiences they create, Iterable and Snowflake empower marketers with unified data, plus the capabilities and flexibility to unlock the data’s full potential. 

Say a Glassdoor professional looking for a new job opportunity receives an email or push notification for a job alert and opens it. Afterward, they may decide to apply for several jobs or further explore the company and available positions. Other communications may include requests for users to write company reviews or share their perspectives in community forums. Thanks to the Iterable and Snowflake partnership, Glassdoor can securely centralize and rationalize the campaign data from Iterable with its user, account, and system event data, as well as behavioral data across their internal systems. This makes it possible for them to see who opened the emails, and if they subsequently contributed content—whether adding in their salary or sharing their work life experience—to Glassdoor. And this gives marketing a deeper understanding of users, their activities, campaign effectiveness, and the overall impact to the business. 

Glassdoor Gains Perspective for Improved User Communications and Satisfaction, Data Compliance, and Reporting

Glassdoor has leveraged the Iterable and Snowflake partnership in different use cases and, as a result, is seeing users gain more value from its products. 

Problem-Free Notifications Equal Useful Job Tips

Glassdoor launched a new feature in its app where people can join different communities and forums to discuss the personal side of professional life. When a new post or reactions and comments on posts are added, Glassdoor will send push notifications to inform users of this. However, before Iterable and Snowflake, this wasn’t possible as they lacked clear visibility into notification delivery and the technical issues preventing a successful delivery. 

By having access to their raw data from Iterable, and then accessing it via Snowflake, they now understand which users are receiving what messages and how many are sent, and if there are duplicates. These insights, reflecting a 360-degree customer view, are integrated in a comprehensive reporting model that allows Glassdoor to quickly diagnose and get to the root of technical issues, and ensure users receive the notifications that aid their job exploration journey.

Tracking Data Compliantly to Maintain User Protection and Satisfaction

Glassdoor has stringent rules about who can access users’ personally identifiable information (PII) and only identifies users by a user ID. When they wanted to move the user ID data out of Iterable in a secure way, and then combine it with data from other systems such as the Glassdoor app, they turned to Snowflake. 

All of the Iterable data sits in Snowflake, and the Glassdoor Data Engineering team brings that data into a secure Snowflake area where a few engineers can access it and map the email to the user ID. By combining this information with the activity that happens on Glassdoor or in their internal systems, they know what’s working well or what isn’t, and can share insights with the business to make adjustments that will maintain customer satisfaction and privacy while also protecting employers’ brand perceptions. 

Having Iterable and Snowflake to engage employers, employees, and job-seekers, and securely capture and manage data, Glassdoor can support the ever-changing needs of its large community as they seek employment, recruit talent, and use their voices to enhance workplace experiences and transparency. With the power of data in hand, the Glassdoor Marketing and Data Engineering teams, company leaders, and partnering brands are also excited about the new opportunities that will equate to revenue streams, better matches for companies and professionals, and a more successful jobs outlook.