A customer data platform (CDP) is generally defined by the CDP Institute as a “packaged software that creates a persistent, unified customer database that is accessible to other systems.”

The aim of a customer data platform is to offer a unified omnichannel view of first-party client information for marketers. It also activates the data in preparation for real-time customer engagement.

However, it has its own set of limits. Several brands will feel the requirement to enhance customer data activation beyond the general uses of a CDP.

One of the main driving factors is to include intelligent customization and automated delivery. These are some of the most important components for a seamless customer experience.

In this blog, we are going to talk about a CDP and its importance.

Why do brands need a customer data platform?

According to Forbes, 93% of marketers believe customer data is important for running effective campaigns and making important business decisions.

When it comes to discussing why companies need a CDP or Customer Data Platform, we need to go through a few points. The marketing world is evolving by the day.

The competition is stiff and marketers are putting in their best foot forward to make their brand stand out. It is very important to stay ahead of the curve and exceed customer expectations.

CDPs help brands get unified customer data, which enables better business making decisions and should boost profits in the long run.

Customers need personalized real-time communications in this age of modern technology. Marketing executives must innovate and take up ways to transcend traditional and boring forms of marketing. The best part is that communication can be personalized based on a wide variety of channels, internal applications and customer data available to the company.

The adoption of digital channels is intensifying information accessibility. Brands can now access a wide variety of data as customers leave footprints on various channels. Companies can now transform customer engagement mechanisms into a new hybrid system incorporating both the physical and digital environment.

Objectives of CDPs

CDPs allow you to build customer profiles in a way that gives you a complete view on each of your individual customers. It helps you enrich your relationship with customers using personalized experiences that can be tailored for each individual.

Collect Accurate Data from the Audience

CDPs also help in collecting accurate data, thereby reducing false information. The best part about a CDP is that it collects first-party data, such as site visitors, subscribers, social media footprints, etc. Since the data comes straight from the audience, it is reliable and you can use it for marketing decisions.

Get a Single Customer View with a Customer Data Platform

CDPs are created to gather data from a wide variety of sources. Then, it is unified for a complete view of the customer across different sources and channels. This data can then be made available to other systems/departments, giving the entire company a synchronized and accurate picture of each individual customer.

Promotes alertness within organizations

A CDP focuses on data integration and allows brands to gather data from all channels. It can be used to offer better, more personalized customer experiences. Seamless experiences are what customers demand from companies.

Establishes Efficiency in Operations

CDPs can boost efficiency in operations by centralizing customer data. It helps you save a lot of time and effort, which you can actually use for other work related to your business.

Monetize your Customer Data

CDP collects and unifies data with the purpose of enhancing experiences for customers. It is for the betterment of service quality and for the increasing of potetinal upsell opportunities.

Practices Democratization of Data

A CDP platform also practices ‘democratization of data‘ as all CDP data will be available to departments across the business in an accessible way .

Basic CDP has the following primary abilities: 

Data ingestion:

CDPs gather first-party consumer information from various sources, such as websites, social media clicks, tweets, and likes on pages, social media clicks, transactional systems, call centers, and more.

Identity management:

CDPs also resolve the identities of consumers across video channels. The best part about a CDP is that it maintains a persistent customer identifier.

Segmentation:

It also allows marketing teams to create and maintain universal identifiers, and enables audience segmentation with unified data in the CDP. (universal what? this sentence doesn’t really make sense but tried to assume what was being written)

Data provision or activation:

It also facilitates the activation of insights on unified customer profiles generated in the CDP. This can be done by offering connectors and APIs to other marketing technologies.

Customer data platform: Things that you need to know

The surge in the usage of CDPs has undoubtedly led to a paradigm shift in the marketing world. Brands or organizations providing CDP solutions come from various fields or sectors, such as digital monitoring, campaign management, etc. The offerings vary hugely in capability, which makes evaluations of which software to use extremely difficult.

A CDP undoubtedly solves various problems that marketers may have. Many experts also believe that CDPs will become standard parts of large enterprise marketing solutions suites like real-time interaction engines.

However, there are various areas where CDPs may fall short, such as the fact that they do not have an established data infrastructure. Moreover, CDP solutions are not effective in tracking customer behavior across all channels and integrating that behavior with offline data in real-time.

Beyond the CDP with comprehensive integration

Hybrid marketing architecture:

CDPs contribute to forming solid customer profiles based on their large volume of data. Their capabilities should enable a company to collect detailed customer-level data about online user behavior while weaving together online and offline information.

Real-time digital incident detection:

CDPs should grow beyond simple data ingestion and include real-time digital event detection. Acting on the events in real-time is also difficult. Combining the requirement for immediacy with the rising focus on data privacy requires customizable events to collect all the required data in real-time. This solution should offer digital guardianship with APIs for merging or eradicating offline customer data and the capability to encrypt sensitive information in the cloud.

AI-powered journey orchestration:

Marketers will get a superb return on investment from activating and using unified customer data profiles through AI-powered, real-time journey orchestration across different channels. It should include comprehensive analytics, real-time decision-making, and seamless integration.

Better customer experiences:

Customer experience management is not just restricted to the marketing department. The improved version should go beyond the marketing department.

Conclusion

By now, we hope that you have understood the importance of a CDP. Integrate this in your business now to see your business grow.