Overview
Spark New Zealand, the country’s largest digital services provider, has transformed its marketing approach: moving from static segments and batch campaigns to delivering real-time, AI-powered experiences. This shift is powered by a seamless integration of Tealium, Snowflake, and Spark New Zealand’s proprietary AI engine, Kapello. By combining live behavioural data, enriched customer profiles, and AI decisioning that operates in less than 200 milliseconds, Spark New Zealand is delivering highly personalised moments at scale and driving millions in incremental revenue.
The Challenge
Spark New Zealand was held back by a tangle of legacy systems and siloed customer data. Point-to-point integrations created inconsistent experiences across their channels. Batch-based marketing processes meant they struggled to access real-time insights, delaying engagement and personalisation.
To deliver on modern customer expectations and stay ahead, Spark New Zealand needed an intelligent, automated, and real-time data foundation.
“Tealium helped us go from data chaos to clarity, where we can finally see, understand, and activate customer data in real time. What used to take weeks now takes hours, and our marketers can build locally, test quickly, and scale what works across 15 markets. This isn’t just about tools, it’s about empowering every brand and market to deliver personalised beauty experiences with agility and trust.”
– Travena Addenbroke, Marketing Transformation & Gen Ai Lead, Spark New Zealand
The Solution
Spark New Zealand rebuilt its Martech stack around Tealium, Snowflake, and Kapello to unlock real-time, AI-powered marketing at scale.
Tealium: The Real-Time Data Engine
Tealium acts as Spark New Zealand’s real-time customer data platform (CDP), capturing customer behaviour across digital and assisted channels. It resolves identities and streams important signals, such as browsing activity or cart abandonment, with millisecond latency, making them instantly available for personalisation.
Snowflake: The Bi-Directional Data Cloud
The integration between Tealium and Snowflake, using Snowpipe Streaming, means Spark New Zealand can send event and profile data to Snowflake in less than 10 seconds. This rapid streaming gives data teams immediate access to the freshest behavioural data for analytics and AI, replacing slow, batch-based processes.
Spark New Zealand’s early adoption of Snowpipe Streaming made them one of the first to use this efficient, serverless CDP-to-data cloud integration. This not only reduced data engineering overhead, it also sped up insights for business and technical teams alike.
“We were given early access to Snowpipe Streaming, and it’s been a game-changer. It lets us stream in Tealium events and enrich them in real time inside Snowflake—no more waiting for a batch run”
–Scott Kempster, MarTech Chapter Lead, Spark New Zealand
Real-Time Bi-Directional Activation
Spark New Zealand’s stack isn’t just fast in one direction. Using Tealium’s Data Connect (reverse ETL), marketers can bring enriched customer traits from Snowflake back into Tealium in less than a minute, no developers required. New segments or use cases can be activated faster, putting marketers in control.
Kapello: The AI Decisioning Engine
To deliver timely, relevant experiences at scale, Spark developed Kapello—a proprietary AI engine purpose-built for next-best-action decisioning. Kapello constantly analyses enriched profiles in Snowflake, using real-time signals from Tealium to decide on the best message or offer for each customer. The entire process, from customer trigger to AI decision to activation, takes less than 300 milliseconds, powering personalised experiences at every touchpoint.
Powering Real-Time Precision
Data Governance and Flexibility
Tealium’s consent-aware event capture and real-time identity resolution ensure Spark New Zealand maintains a unified, privacy-respecting customer view across channels. By leveraging secure, governed data flows between Tealium and Snowflake, Spark New Zealand can deliver always-on personalisation with enterprise-grade control and transparency, a critical requirement for regulated industries.
| Component | Purpose | Typical Latency | Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tealium CDP | Real-time event capture, identity resolution, streaming | Milliseconds | Live, actionable customer context everywhere |
| Snowflake Data Cloud | Store, enrich, and analyse real-time plus historical data | Ingest <10s Query/activation <1min |
Consistent, governed data for AI and teams |
| Kapello AI Engine | In-memory AI for next-best-action decisioning | End-to-end: <300ms | Personalisation at scale dynamically and instantly |
Results
Spark New Zealand’s new stack has delivered remarkable business impact:
- +22% Incremental Conversion from AI-driven “Next Best Offer” decisions
- +13% Incremental Conversion from real-time triggers like cart abandonment
- 150 Million+ Personalised Offers delivered monthly across all channels
- <200ms Response Time from customer action to AI-powered decision
- Ready for GenAI and Autonomous Marketing at scale
Looking Ahead
Spark New Zealand’s ambition is bold: build a marketing system that learns, adapts, and delivers value autonomously. With Tealium providing live customer context, Snowflake as the analytics brain, and Kapello powering high-speed AI decisioning, Spark New Zealand is moving from reactive campaigns to a proactive, always-on personalisation engine.
This is the future of customer engagement: real-time, intelligent, and autonomous.
To hear more about Spark New Zealand’s journey, watch their Digital Velocity keynote session here
