Choosing A Customer Data Platform Learn what makes a CDP work and how it can bring customer-driven marketing benefits to your marketing team. The Customer Data Platform Built for Marketers
TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction to Customer Data Platforms Why do You Need a CDP? What to Look for in a CDP? How Other Companies Are Doing This Get Started Now
Introduction Marketers need a new kind of data platform. Companies like Netflix, Pinterest, Amazon and LinkedIn build great consumer relationships. They grow their businesses around serving customers and fully understanding them through data. Traditionally, companies have tried to understand and manage customer relationships in two separate types of systems: 1. Channel-centric tools like email services, ads, web analytics, mobile apps, etc,.and/or 2. Databases or Data Warehouses that store various data sets in-house by IT Both methods result in storing and using customer data in different places. Siloed data is difficult to stitch together and makes a customer-centric approach much more difficult. Marketers seek building omni-channel experiences to cater to how customers interact across multiple touchpoints when and where they want. The traditional customer data management model leads to a disjointed experience. Not being able to act on the signals that your customers provide in real-time is a missed opportunity to create delightful experiences. Choosing a Customer Database Platform : Introduction 1
We Need a Definitive Customer Understanding Many marketers continue to work with glimpses of customer understanding because they don t have the means of putting the entire picture together. Most organizations connect customer data from different business functions, like email, loyalty programs, web, and point-of-sale, to name a few. They struggle to combine both static and real-time signals to gain a better customer understanding. Customers know what a great experience looks like from their interactions with stellar, customer-centric brands like Netflix, Amazon, and Pinterest, and they expect nothing less. Companies must organize around their customer to deliver great experiences in today s data-driven world. Enter: The Customer Data Platform Growthverse defines a Customer Data Platform (CDP) as new marketing infrastructure to pull data from disparate systems, create and manage customer profiles, discover new customer segments, and make these segments available back to all your marketing tools. A CDP delivers the next tier of customer understanding by connecting data from various channels and siloes within your organization and unearthing rich, holistic profiles built to power your customer experience. CDP s make the data-driven customer-centric horsepower of a Netflix, Pinterest, Amazon and LinkedIn much more accessible for marketers. Choosing a Customer Database Platform : Introduction 2
Use this guide to understand what makes a CDP work and what to look for to compliment and empower your customer-centric initiatives. Choosing a Customer Database Platform : Introduction 3
Growthverse defines a Customer Data Platform (CDP) as new marketing infrastructure to pull data from disparate systems, create and manage customer profiles, discover new customer segments, and make these segments available back to all your marketing tools. 4
Why Do You Need a CDP? CDP s are the advantage data-driven marketers have been waiting for. Connect Data From All Your Channels Unify & Enrich Data with Lytics Create Behavioral Segmentation Sync to Execution tools Companies invest in many different touchpoint marketing tools. Yet, marketing doesn t have access to all the customer data because: Valuable customer data is typically available as a report Customer profiles have been limited to demographic data (e.g. location, age) and transactional data (eg. when purchased, amount) in an offline data warehouse Custom data has been siloed and locked inside the organization Marketers optimize each one of their channels, but have no way to unify all of this optimization to create a new competitive edge. Choosing a Customer Database Platform : Why Do You Need A CDP? 5
What do you get from a CDP? Get your customer data together in a single, easy-to-use place Coordinate marketing around next-level customer understanding and use behavioral signals to reach customers more effectively. A CDP brings together all of your customer data Use predictive science to find audiences that matter Sync those audiences with your marketing tools Gain a holistic understanding of customers across touchpoints. Improve targeting and personalization using cross-channel audiences with all of your marketing tools. What are the benefits of a CDP? Efficient Marketing Operations: Create a centralized, customer data asset that marketing can own and manage Data-Driven Performance: Apply predictive science to customer segmentation to optimize ad spend. Right Content, Right Time: Coordinate campaigns in an omnichannel manner with maximum effectiveness. Increase Conversion: Providing contextual ads or content throughout the customer experience based on how customers will likely engage. Increase Retention: Fully personalize and optimize loyalty and support programs with a customer-centric approach. Choosing a Customer Database Platform : Why Do You Need A CDP? 6
What to Look for in a CDP? Use this checklist to make sure your CDP features the following: A Marketer-Friendly UI Visual custom audience builder Pre-built integrations for many popular Martech tools View universal customer profiles easily A Wide Selection of Martech-related APIs APIs for data collection, enrichment and export of data Real-time profile API for personalization Real-time notifications to see live changes in audiences across tools Platform Flexibility Cloud-based, secure data service Resolve and merge multiple user identities across channels and tools Collect structured and unstructured real-time event data Dynamic, progressive user profiles - from unknown web visitor to known via any identifier Data Onboarding for multiple data sources and types (e.g. loyalty database, web, email service provider, point-of-sale, third party) Support for real-time data streaming and batch processing Choosing a Customer Database Platform : What to Look for in a CDP? 7
Platform Flexibility (cont d) Customizable, adaptable data schema: no need for predefined fields or long implementations Automated data export to marketing tools for execution, or Big Data tools like Google BigQuery or Hadoop for analytics or visualization Data Replay to incorporate historical and new data sources Predictive Analytics Predictive engagement scoring and metrics gives you next-level customer understanding Classify content and determine customer intent to influence your content strategy Lookalike audience modeling finds current, best customers from other data sources Pre-built lifecycle segments so immediately predictive marketing use Progressive audience discovery via machine learning Choosing a Customer Database Platform : What to Look for in a CDP? 8
How Are Other Companies Doing This? Companies are trying many different ways to aggregate customer data into a single place where they can view and use it. Here are the primary ways that companies attempt to do this. Custom In-House Databases Building and managing custom databases and data warehouses is an enterprise-type solution that works well as a long-term data storage challenge, but doesn t support real-time marketing use cases or provide API support for ongoing integration and export of audience segments. Tag Management Tag Managers are used to collect and route event data from websites and sometimes mobile, but do not transform various events into user profiles or segments that can be used to support marketing. Marketing Suite These marketing applications are loosely integrated with specific tools to create limited user profiles and campaign extensibility. They typically require ongoing custom services and manual integrations to support customer data capture and export. Choosing a Customer Database Platform : How are Other Companies Doing This? 9
Email Service Providers Email tools store a small subset of customer data and only deliver audience segments back into email, and not to other marketing tools or systems. Traditional CRM CRM tools are limited in the types of data they can collect and store and the primary use case is to manage sales opportunities and sales accounts, not consumer relationships. DMP DMPs are designed to support ad tech use cases for targeting by combining third-party data with a batch upload of marketer s first-party data. It s not a true customer database since it has limited extensibility to other tools and use cases. CDP CDPs are purpose-built to create a central repository of all your customer data and to make cross channel audiences available to all your marketing tools for coordinated targeting and personalization. Choosing a Customer Database Platform : How are Other Companies Doing This? 10
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