Experian launches new Snowflake apps for marketers

Experian has launched two new apps within Snowflake: Contact Data Validation and Audience Activate.

The launch expands Experian's existing services on Snowflake's platform.

Both applications are designed to let organisations work with customer data inside their existing Snowflake environments, rather than moving it to external systems. The approach is intended to help companies improve data quality and build audience segments for paid media campaigns while maintaining tighter control over governance and privacy.

Contact Data Validation checks and standardises customer contact records. The app covers physical addresses, email addresses and phone numbers, and adds enrichment functions within Snowflake.

This can help businesses reduce failed deliveries and unsuccessful communications, while improving the quality of data used for analytics and artificial intelligence work.

Audience Activate is aimed at marketing teams that want to turn their customer records into targetable digital audiences. The app links customer data to the digital identifiers used by marketing channels, allowing advertisers to build audience segments for paid media activity without transferring customer data outside Snowflake.

Experian said the product reaches 85% of UK households through digital connectivity, giving brands broader reach across marketing touchpoints.

Data strategy

The move is part of a broader push by Experian to deepen its role in customer data management, analytics and marketing services within third-party cloud data platforms. It also reflects growing demand from companies that want to use customer data for marketing and AI projects without increasing the number of systems handling sensitive records.

Andrew Abraham, Global Managing Director, Experian Data Quality, outlined the rationale for the launch.

"In today's data-driven world, businesses need confidence that the data powering their customer engagement, analytics and AI strategies is accurate, actionable and trusted.

Experian is constantly innovating to help businesses overcome data challenges and unlock new opportunities. We're excited to deepen our relationship with Snowflake and help organisations improve the quality of their data where it already lives, reach the right audiences, and turn trusted data into better customer and business outcomes," said Andrew Abraham, Global Managing Director, Experian Data Quality, at Experian.

The new apps follow an earlier integration between the two companies involving Aperture Data Studio, which lets users profile, transform and validate data within Snowflake. That move signalled Experian's intent to make more of its data quality and marketing tools available where corporate data is already stored.

Marketing use

For marketers, the launch addresses a persistent challenge in digital advertising: the gap between first-party customer data held by brands and the identifiers needed to activate campaigns across external platforms. Businesses have increasingly sought ways to bridge that gap while limiting data movement and maintaining compliance standards.

Colin Grieves, Managing Director, Experian Marketing Services UK&I, described the issue.

"Businesses want to unlock more value from their existing customer data, but when it comes to activating across paid media, there's often a gap between the customer data they own and their ability to turn it into actionable audiences across digital marketing channels. With Audience Activate, we're helping businesses bridge that gap in a simpler, faster and privacy-conscious way.

Brands can connect their customer data to channel-relevant identifiers and build and deploy audiences to advertising platforms without moving customer data outside their Snowflake environment. This gives them the ability to scale digital reach, improve marketing efficiency and deliver growth, while maintaining strong data governance and control," said Grieves.

Contact Data Validation is available now through a free trial. The app will be made available globally through the Snowflake Marketplace later.

Audience Activate is in beta testing with a selected group of customers and will be made available to UK businesses from January 2027.

Experian is a FTSE 100-listed data and technology group with 25,200 employees across 33 countries.