It’s unlikely you’ll order a ribeye at a pizzeria, because pizzerias are usually focused on one thing—making good pizza!

Similarly, it seems these days that the best consumer engagement tech comes from suppliers that behave like pizzerias—they choose one technology, and they obsess over it until the recipe is perfected.

Virtual Reality, wearables, interactive gaming, touchscreens/kiosks, and smart detection, to name a few, all require substantial investment, passion, and execution to work in a way that reels in consumers and compels them to engage.

But let’s not forget the why behind the what: engagement technologies are only as good as the data they share about the folks who want to experience a brand.

To that end, it can be frustrating for event marketers to discover their consumer data platforms will only play nicely with a limited menu of engagement technologies. After all, that's like being told you can have the whole buffet...except the dessert station!

Flexibility is an important attribute of consumer data capture, and an easy way to avoid a recipe for disaster is to look for the availability of an enterprise-grade API.

Think of a data platform’s API as the key that unlocks the possibilities: turn it, and event marketers now have the freedom to choose the best technologies for the objectives they are trying to achieve.

Sure, it is possible to compromise and go with a less suitable technology because it accommodates a data platform. It’s also possible for a pizzeria to cook in a microwave instead of a pizza oven, but should they?

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