Customer data platforms: everything you need to know
This blog will explore what CDPs are, why they matter, and how they can revolutionize how businesses interact with their audiences.
In a world where data is being captured at opposite ends of the spectrum — enterprises want to draw valuable insights from their data, but consumers don’t want to lose their privacy in the process — it’s becoming increasingly crucial to balance these two extremes.
One answer to that dilemma is a customer data platform, a tool that has become famous among marketers to assist in centralizing data for analytics and research while ensuring a clean, privacy-minded result.
This benefits corporate marketing teams, and it might be the right approach for your organization.
Customer Data Platform — Defined
A customer data platform (CDP) is a software tool that businesses use to organize and manage all the information they collect about their customers in one place. Essentially, they’re data management platforms that automatically collect, sort, and standardize vast amounts of information — on a scale that humans can’t.
Simply put, CDP is like having a virtual assistant who knows everything about your customers and who’s there to help you better target them with your messaging, activations, and campaigns.
What’s the purpose of a Customer data platforms?
You might be wondering, “What is the significance of a customer data platform?” Well, there are several compelling reasons for the importance of a CDP. In fact, a customer data platform fulfills three distinct purposes.
#1. Collect and unify all first-party data
Numerous systems frequently employed by marketers, including email, analytics, CRM, e-commerce, and social media platforms, often function independently and do not seamlessly share data with one another. It’s hard to get a complete picture and analyze what you’re looking at. A customer data platform aims to eliminate those issues by connecting all the tools marketers use and acting as a single source of truth for first-party customer data.
#2. Customer data management
CDPs manage consumer privacy, first-party data and data rights by controlling the data flow between different marketing systems and managing consent. This is the world of data privacy and GDPR; your business requires to collect and document, the management of support actively, and data flows.
#3. Customer data activation
Once you have received permission to collate first-party user data and have consolidated and structured it into profiles, you can take action. CDPs can develop audience segments that can be utilized across the rest of your marketing platforms and channels.
Why should organizations give importance to customer data platforms?
Organizations prioritize customer data platforms primarily due to the substantial advantages they offer upon adoption. Some of the key benefits associated with the implementation of customer data platforms encompass:
Source: Credensys
- It provides valuable customer data and maintains the accuracy and cleanliness of data.
- It prevents data duplication, thereby minimizing both the unnecessary expenditure of resources and the time required for corrections.
- Improves personalization and targeting that will help in boosting customer engagement and customer retention.
- Empowers businesses by facilitating data-informed decision-making.
- It assists the organization to stay compliant with data regulations.
- It protects the organization from data loss, theft, breaches, etc.
How do CDPs work?
The basic CDP has four primary capabilities:
Source: CDP basics
Data ingestion: CDPs pull first-party customer data from multiple sources (e.g., transactional systems, web behaviour, call center, demographics or POS).
Identity management: CDPs solves the identities of customers across numerous channels. Most of them utilize deterministic matching and profile stitching with identifiers offered by the inbound data. The CDP curates and maintains a persistent consumer identifier.
Segmentation: CDPs provides marketers to maintain and build universal omnichannel audience segmentation with the consolidated data in the CDP.
Data provision/activation: CDPs facilitate activating the insights and unified customer profiles generated in the CDP. This is done by giving APIs and connectors to other marketing technologies.
How do businesses leverage customer data platforms (CDPs)?
Data platforms are potent enablers for new workflows and processes, thanks to their ability to sort through gigantic amounts of information and share what’s relevant with other integrated software tools.
Source: Credensys
Here are several ways in which market leaders are currently employing them:
1. Customer segmentation and personalization: Segmenting your target audience into distinct groups to enable tailored marketing campaigns, promotions, or activations.
2. Targeted and tailored advertising: This entails the implementation of marketing initiatives and content in strategic placements to ensure maximum visibility among a targeted audience. The effectiveness of ad retargeting and the creation of lookalike audiences is significantly enhanced through the utilization of a consolidated customer database.
3. Recommendations and UX optimization: When you collect data about customer behaviour, you can spot patterns that can inform the customer experience. That might mean more personalized recommendations or dynamically altering your website for each customer.
4. Omnichannel workflows: Utilizing customer journey data for marketing automation can effectively empower you to stay in control of your marketing campaigns and monitor customer behavior across a growing array of digital channels.
Some scenarios where Customer Data Platform can help businesses
<div class="table-responsive">
<table class="table table-bordered">
<thead>
<tr>
<td>Customer segmentation </td>
<td>Optimizing conversion rates </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Connecting online to offline </td>
<td>A/B testing </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Customer personalization </td>
<td>Omnichannel automation </td>
</tr><tr>
<td>Lead scoring </td>
<td><b>Data entry errors:</b> Mistakes during input.</td>
</tr><tr>
<td>Improved email deliverability </td>
<td>Retargeting and lookalike advertising </td>
<tr>
<td>Better and more online reviews </td>
<td>Product recommendations </td>
</tr>
</thead></table>
</div>
Final Thoughts
In the current sphere, customers expect personalized experiences, and businesses demand data-driven insights; Customer Data Platforms have become a vital tool. They enable enterprises to centralize, unify, and leverage customer data to drive personalized marketing, improve customer experiences, and boost overall business success.
To get a granular view of your customers, connect with Polestar Solutions for unified customer analytics services to stay competitive in today’s dynamic business landscape and build long-lasting relationships with their customers. Book a consultation today!
