How Sonos increased marketing ROI 20%

Why having the right data platform in place can be the difference between struggling with disconnected systems and unlocking significant marketing ROI.

20%

increase in marketing channel ROI

2x

improvement in team productivity

40%

reduction in total cost of ownership

Background

Sonos, the global leader in home sound systems, serves more than 16 million customers and manages over 40 million registered devices. With lifecycles stretching across decades, the company needed a more agile way to engage customers and manage data. Their fragmented stack made it difficult to act quickly, personalize experiences, and scale marketing impact.

Chord provided Sonos with a single, commerce-native data platform—unifying fragmented systems, streamlining processes, and enabling faster, smarter customer engagement.

The Challenge

• Lifelong customer journeys created unique engagement challenges.
• Disconnected systems and growing privacy regulations complicated data management.
• Marketing teams struggled to act on signals from purchases, apps, and devices.
• Evaluating 25 CDPs and analytics tools proved most couldn't deliver a unified, scalable solution.

“The key to achieving lifetime value isn't just marketing—it's listening to customers and always striving to provide value when you respond.”

The Solution

Sonos chose Chord to unify their data environment in just three months—far faster than the 18+ months typical for custom builds. Chord integrated device, transactional, digital, and third-party data into one continuously updated platform.

With a single source of truth, marketing and product teams could finally deliver timely, personalized experiences across every channel—without the burden of siloed data and manual workflows.

The Results

• 20% increase in marketing channel ROI by sending the right messages at the right time.
• 2x improvement in team productivity as teams spent less time battling fragmented tools.
• 40% reduction in total cost of ownership through consolidation and lower operational overhead.

“Chord enables Sonos teams to work smarter, not harder.”

Why Chord Was the Right Partner

Chord's capabilities go beyond typical CDPs. Their platform combines analytics, business intelligence, warehousing, data modeling, marketing activations, and AI copilots all in one place. This made it easier for Sonos to adopt new marketing platforms without extensive development efforts or complex integration work.

“Chord does what most CDPs don't. Their expertise meant setting everything up was truly easy for our team. And it's never easy.”

Lessons for Other Brands: Data is the Key to Customer Loyalty

Sonos's success underscores a key lesson: long-lifecycle brands can't rely on duct-taped stacks. They need a clean, unified data foundation to unlock sustainable customer loyalty and ROI.

With Chord, Sonos now has the infrastructure to keep pace with growth—and the agility to turn every customer interaction into long-term value.