We are living in a world of data-driven marketing. Marketers are leveraging Customer Data Platforms (CDP) as a competitive advantage. CDP solutions provide an all-in-one platform where marketers can visualize the entire customer journey from click to revenue. As experts in the industry, we have witnessed first-hand how CDP reduces churn rates. Also, we have seen how it enhances lead conversion and retention.
Indeed, it is increasingly becoming difficult to monitor customers across social media channels, emails, websites, affiliate sites, and traditional media. Gartner’s CMO survey of 2017 shows that marketers spend more than 67% of their budgets on customer retention and growth. As marketing expenditures scale high, CFO’s demand for actionable data increases.
We know how difficult it is for marketers and salespersons to work without having a glimpse of the analytics. Every marketer always wants to know his/her performance in real-time. As IT experts in CDP solutions, we have built a solution that would make the work of everyone a little bit easier.
We consolidate and integrate customer data, thus creating a customer-centric marketing system. Our CDP solutions enable marketers to leverage premium funneling systems. This allows them to develop incisive marketing strategies.
CDPs can be confusing as it sits in the epicenter of an industry that is already crowded with alternative tools. Here we offer a nuanced overview of CDP to help you understand why you need it.
What are CDP Solutions and Who Needs them?
CDP is essential for any marketer and salesperson that wants to leverage omnichannel systems to direct data to a single platform. It’s a solution that allows you to receive invaluable insights on the best marketing practices and trends. This method of aggregating data is unique as it captures both online and offline sources of customer information.
CDP solutions are handy for anyone that wants to understand demographic or socioeconomic factors driving sales. It allows businesses to better analyze customer behavior. For example, it may assist in knowing why customers sometimes place items in the cart but fail to check out. It gives hints on why customers say “no thank you” to marketers’ propositions.
The rise in technology coupled with increased efficiency of data collection tools has led to the generation of large data sets. CDPs provide a one-stop-shop for consolidating and integrating this kind of customer data.
When we talk about acquiring and retaining customers, we are talking about creating a personalized service. Customizing services and products for customers requires proper management of marketing funnels. But often, marketers get entangled in webs of fragmented funnels. CDP solutions streamline marketing processes across a spectrum of channels. It offers real-time analytics and reporting, thus expediting the process of monitoring customer behavior across these channels.
CDP solutions are vital tools for marketers that want to visualize performance in multiple devices and platforms. Without a unifying platform, aligning all the processes of your marketing mix can be a nightmare. You won’t answer customer queries on time, or manage to tailor quality service to existing customers. That’s why you need a CDP solution.
Why Should Marketers and Salespersons have a CDP Solution?
According to Richardson’s Selling Challenges Research Study of 2019, the top challenge facing marketers is convincing customers to switch products. Marketers fail to convert leads because they do not understand the factors that influence buying decisions. Here is where CDP comes in. CDP provides real-time stats of the market. This enables you to understand the factors that shape customers’ tastes and preferences. As a result, you can tailor your marketing strategies to suit the market needs.
An interplay of complex market factors determine the marketing strategies you choose. These factors range from customers’ perception of quality to price wars. CDP solutions resolve these issues by accelerating contextual agility of marketing. It allows marketers to analyze market forces and come up with ad hoc measures to counter competition.
Richardson’s report also highlights that 25% of marketers face problems in providing value to the customer. It means that salespersons create sales pieces that are not rich in information. Creating sharp and informative sales videos, brochures, social media ads, PPCs, etc. requires you to understand your target market.
The Chief Brand Officer of P&G Marc Pritchard could not have said it better:
“The potential to create business value is significant. With precision targeting, automated buying, selling, and distribution, user-generated communication and amplification of earned media.”
CDP solutions provide marketers with content-rich data about customers. This allows them to create value through personalized services and products. CDP solutions enable you to edge out the competition as you can develop products based on the needs of your prospects.
Features and Deliverables of CDPs
Not every customer data platform is ideal for your business. Enterprises need customized solutions to meet the specific requirements of their industries. A CDP is a marketing system that integrates enterprise customer data from multiple channels. It provides invaluable modeling and optimizing solutions for marketers.
CDPs are essential in targeting campaigns. They are purpose-built solutions acting as a nexus for inconveniently placed marketing technological tools. It combines capabilities of CRMs, ERPs, MSPs, DMPs, and workflow management tools among other tools essential in customer data collection and analysis.
So what are the deliverables of CDPs?
- First-party identifiers. CDPs provide useful insights as they collect customer data at the individual level. It collects first-party identifiers like device IDs, cookies, and emails.
- Customer profile unification. CDP solutions monitor customer activity online and offline. It unifies a customer’s social media handles, phone, emails, and other communication channels.
- Segmentation. Marketers using CDPs benefit from advanced segmentation capabilities. You will be able to create market segments with ease by utilizing the extensive features of your CDP solution.
- Data hodgepodge. CDP solutions receive data from a raft of channels. It prepares this data and sorts them out so that it can be used for specific purposes.
- Data analysis. CDPs provide for automation as it sends data to analytic tools for processing. As a result, you receive insightful inferences on the data in real-time.
Benefits of CDP Solutions
Holistic View of the Customer
CDP solutions provide a through-and-through customer overview. It’s a system that gathers information about a customer from different channels and unifies them. It organizes a hodgepodge of data and aligns them in a way that makes it easy to use in making decisions.
High ROI
Because CDP is an integration of other tools such as DMPs and CRMs, it gives more meaningful information about the target market leading to a higher return on investment. If you do it right, implementation of a CDP solution will see advertising ROI soar high.
Better Analytics
Real-time analytics eases the work of the campaign team. When marketers arm themselves with the latest information, they have time to analyze their solutions and restructure them for better results.
Improved Optimization
CDPs offer extras like self-optimization, next-best recommendations, and dynamic optimization. With such capabilities, marketers can experiment and test various marketing tactics at low costs.
Simplified Data
At a minimum, a CDP solution makes customer data simplification a straightforward process. This is a plus for the marketer and the customer. For a marketer, visualization of customer behavior across multiple platforms becomes easy. For a customer, messaging across various channels leads to better engagement and satisfaction.
Customer data platforms are vital data collection, aggregation, and analysis tools. CDPs use artificial intelligence, Big Data, and Internet of Things (IoT) to create comprehensive data. If you want to know if your CDP solution is giving you the desired results, keep in mind the KPIs. These can be customer loyalty, conversion rates, retention rates, and operational efficiency. KPIs are different and depend on your specific marketing goals.
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