Clickstream Replay Service

[CDP for SaaS]November 11, 2024

CDP for SAAS

​Introducing Blotout’s Clickstream Replay Service for Mid Funnel SaaS companies

In today’s privacy-driven landscape, Blotout’s ‘CDP for SaaS’ just raised the bar by launching a groundbreaking Clickstream Replay Service.

For many providers, collecting high-quality, non-PII or consented data is challenging, limited by privacy policies or technological constraints. This new service overcomes these obstacles, allowing companies to unlock data potential that traditional systems miss out on—without compromising compliance or efficiency.

So, why is Clickstream Replay a game-changer?

Legacy data collection methods are no longer enough. Storing fragmented, unstitched data in a cloud warehouse or data lake drives up costs and complicates analysis.

Even more critically, without a reliable way to replay and stitch data to events, companies lose out on the full picture of customer journeys. This is especially problematic as new cookie restrictions leave gaps in tracking and attribution.

Key technical advantages;

Storage efficiency - store what you can process

Cost efficiency - significantly reduce cost of processing flat files (buckets) that don't need to be processed

Privacy first - enable end customers to store their data until flags are set to receive data

Who is the primary ICP?

This product is primarily for SaaS companies, especially in the marketing spectrum to go post cookie and enable scenarios to support their legacy infrastructure.

Finally, any SaaS companies building their SaaS infrastructure that want to embrace server side to prevent immediate tech debt should consider this solution.

Use Case: Solving Data Capture Challenges for Legacy Retention Providers

Scenario: Legacy Retention Providers Using Cloud Infrastructure with Member Data Only

Issue: Limited Data Intake Without PII

Many legacy retention systems can only process data when linked to personally identifiable information (PII), such as an email or phone number. This creates a major roadblock, preventing these providers from capturing customer interactions or behavioral data before an opt-in event.

Challenge: Missed Pre-Opt-In Insights Without a pre-PII data capture, retention providers struggle to understand how users are navigating their journey prior to opting in. This lack of visibility into the pre-consent phase leaves critical gaps in understanding the customer lifecycle and limits the ability to optimize retention strategies effectively.

Solution: Blotout’s Clickstream Replay Service Blotout addresses this by securely holding customer data until an opt-in event occurs (such as a form fill, consent, or purchase). Once the opt-in is confirmed, Blotout’s service automatically stitches and replays the data, including event timestamps, to deliver a fully integrated view of the customer journey—bridging the gap and providing actionable insights even from pre-opt-in stages.

How does Clickstream Replay work?

Before we get in to the details; lets discuss our tech stack [ example using Cloudflare ]

1st Party Web server -> every customer (domain) gets their own web server with its own storage and compute [ single tenant irrespective of size of account ]

Cloudflare Workers -> every event gets associated with a worker that navigates its transform, storage and compute sub workers

Cloudflare R2 -> Edge based distributed lake

Cloudflare D1 -> Profile, ID and Consent database

Here is how replay works; When an event comes, the edge decides if they know the user - if the edge can identify the browser ID, and look up D1 profile, that decision decides if that data for user against browser ID is stored or passed through via consented checks. If a browser ID sets /data, D1 profile DB stores the PII and then triggers a workflow to retrigger all anonymous events. Once all anonymous events are replayed via a single worker, those events are forever deleted

Why This Matters

With cookies on the brink of extinction, the shift to passkeys and device-based identifiers is inevitable. This change will fundamentally alter how data is tracked and sessions are stitched, especially in scenarios where user intent hasn’t been clearly signaled and browser-provided IDs are restricted. In this landscape, the ability to store data until a reliable ID is established becomes a crucial capability for maintaining accurate session tracking.

Moreover, as ID and consent regulations continue to fragment, the need to hold non-processed data for key trigger events—like consent approval or ID enablement—becomes essential. Blotout’s approach provides a privacy-first solution by allowing data storage only until the necessary user permissions are set, ensuring compliance without sacrificing data integrity.

This approach isn’t just about staying compliant; it’s about future-proofing data processing in a privacy-centered world.

when ID is unavailable Figure: High level workflow for how data gets stored [ when ID is unavailable ]

an ID via /data call Figure: High level workflow for how data gets replayed after an incident [ an ID via /data call ]

Is this available in production

Yes, clickstream replay is available today for any CDP.

Is there competition?

If you compare against a Snowplow implementation, Snowplow does not support apps that enable such scenarios. The developer would have to implement such an implementation that is time consuming and limiting in terms of focusing on application development?

What about CDP?

CDP like Rudderstack do not support CDP for SaaS mechanisms, so there is no multi-tenant comparable to start with. Segment.io is further limiting as compared to Rudderstack for multi-tenant SaaS for CDP scenarios.

Book a demo today and see how Blotout can future-proof your data infrastructure.