Things Are Changing

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

Still, customers expect a cohesive experience that is relevant and similar to the level of service and personal feeling given by human interaction in a local café or a store. Consequently, this means that:

We Need to Utilize Data  

More information is available to us than ever before. The ability to process this data is growing equally as quick. Digitization means that we can create new data-driven services and automate our internal processes. We can now be personal for real.

We Need to Change the Way We Talk to Customers

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 technology supporting it. Customer Data platforms (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 laundering, 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 in order 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 of dialogues. Dashboards with follow-up of communication as well of customers, making sure that customers receive the most relevant communication and that it generates impact.

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.

To Sum Up

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 and procurements of CDPs as well as their implementation. Remotion is a leader in Scandinavia regarding data-driven communication and is using new technology to support this. We have experience in and knowledge about a number of CDPs and Personalization engines.