ARTICLE

Customer Data Platforms are revolutionizing marketing

Everything we buy and all the services we use are right in front of us – just a click away. This creates hyper competition. Customer journeys include interactions in both digital and physical touchpoints, creating a complex pattern, unique to each and every customer.

ARTICLE

Customer Data Platforms are revolutionizing marketing

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Author

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The critical role of CDP’s in driving personalized marketing and sustainable business growth

Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) are essential to harness vast data resources and deliver personalized experiences across digital and physical touchpoints. They enable real-time communication, effective targeting, and holistic customer analysis, addressing evolving customer expectations in a hypercompetitive landscape. Without CDPs, personalization and targeted marketing is diminished, ultimately hindering business growth.

Transforming marketing with Customer Data Platforms

Customers are expecting a cohesive experience that is relevant and match the level of service and personal touch given by human interaction in a local café or store. Consequently, this means that we need to utilize the data that is being made available to us more than ever before. Thus, the ability to process the data is growing equally as quick. Digitalization means that we can create new data-driven services and automate our internal processes. So, it’s time to get personal.

Changing the way we talk to our customers

CDP’s have different components and not all of them have the same focus. Brands are built through good customer experiences in relevant touchpoints, not through brand campaigns. We need to reach customers in real time and in the contexts and channels where they make their purchasing decisions – and we need to be personal to be relevant.

To be able to support this cohesive customer experience, we must have the technology supporting it. CDPs enable us to communicate with customers in real time, with relevant messages, in the right channel, and at the right time. A CDP facilitates this by incorporating the following components:

Data Management

The collection of data from different types of sources. Data cleaning, transformation and management of a data structure that supports the business and marketing.

Profile Unification

Compiles a profile for a customer based on different data sources. Business rules are used to match several profiles for the same customer to get a good picture of the customer’s preferences.

Customer Analysis

Profiling of customers through DNAs, segmentations, predictive models, and recommendation models. This is key to be able to analyze all customers and to give them as personalized a customer experience as possible.

Targeting & Triggers

Management of personalization of customer dialogues. We need to be able to address the customer based on how he/she interacts with us.

Campaign Orchestration

Manage customer dialogs across multiple channels and organize dynamic multi-step campaigns. Share segments across platforms and channels to reach customers with relevant communication through email, social media, and apps.

Follow-up & Reporting

Measure all communication using control groups & A/B testing dialogues. Dashboards that makes sure that customers receive the most relevant communication and that it generates impact.

However, not all CDPs have the same focus. Gartner has divided the market for CDPs into four different segments:

CDP Engines and Toolkits: These vendors are often described as a CDP toolbox and are available as open source and include feature sets that are perfect for IT-led teams.
Marketing Data integrators: Focus is on data management. These vendors include features that enable detailed control of event data streams from a marketing-friendly interface, but no campaign orchestration. Examples of systems are Tealium and mParticle.
Smart Hub: These providers emphasize orchestration and personalization. Predictive analysis, segmentation and interfaces for customer journey design are common. Common systems are Exponea, Optimove, BlueVenn and BlueConic.
Marketing Cloud CDPs: Tools where everything is built in, but where it still is difficult to handle data and orchestration as well as to connect to other systems. Examples of Marketing clouds are Adobe and Salesforce.

Conclusion

Companies that want to be able to give their customers a coherent experience, an experience that is relevant and comparable to the level of service and personal feeling given by human interaction, should invest in a CDP to support these objectives.

Remotion has carried out a number of evaluations, procurements, and implementations of CDPs. Remotion is a leader in Scandinavia when it comes to data-driven communication and is using new technology to support this thought leaadership. We have experience in, and knowledge about, several CDPs and Personalization engines.

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