Have you ever wondered how you can identify preferred customers based on data? Adding a ‘love’ emoji next to your BCF (Best Customer Forever) might look cute, but that’s not the solution we’re looking for. In MarTech, you have to make choices in both tools and implementation. Just because a high-end solution works for one company, doesn’t necessarily mean it will translate to your situation.

You will have to assemble the right combination of tools to process all data that will play a role in your activities. The challenge lies in the fact that data is often processed with separate tools and by various experts in their particular field. 

With a Customer Data Platform (CDP), all relevant data can be presented within a single viewport regardless from where the data originated from. Let’s take a look at the concept of CDP and how this platform can benefit marketing professionals.

Introduction to CPD

A Customer Data Platform is a marketing system in which customer data provided from various channels in an organization is consolidated in order to create various customer models. This allows the marketing professional to model, target, and deploy messages and/or offers to customers. This data is presented in a unified web-based interface.

This doesn’t seem to be a unique set of features. However, CDP differentiates itself from other similar martech tools in two unique ways:

1. The marketing organization is presented with a complete and individualized customer view.
2. All features available to the user are presented in a single user interface.

With other systems that feature similar data management, the various data from different sources never present a complete view of the customer or prospect. Let’s find out where CDP actually provides an added value to other systems in play…

How CPD can improve your marketing and business

There’s an expression that states, “can’t see the forest for the trees”. In other words, there’s so much information available that using it all becomes impossible. We’re living in a world of Big Data. Unfortunately, that often means it ends up in a Big Mess. Face it, you can collect a lot of data, but it’s pretty much useless unless the data is processed and consolidated with other data. There are many tools available to orchestrate campaigns, the customer journey, advertising, mailings, and many, many more. Various experts seem to hold their cards close to their vest, leaving marketers to operate based on sheer guesswork. With CDP, marketing professionals no longer have to work with incomplete information; they can take control over the available data.

To make it a bit more concrete, let’s list some possibilities:

• You can create unified and persistent customer profiles. Instead of data points from various sources, you can look at defined attributes of an individual client or prospective one. This customer profile is updated dynamically when new data arrives.
• The available attributes can be filtered or grouped in any possible configuration, so multidimensional segmentation can be achieved. These results can also be used to run predictions or change behaviors.
• Timing is critical in business. This means acting, not reacting, on the customer lifecycle. You can now be proactive because, when you have all available data at hand, you can activate marketing programs on all available channels.
• Based on all available data you can run predictive models and analyze the outcomes. This results in implementing superior segmentation with a higher yield.

Hopefully, you’re starting to see the difference between an actual Customer Data Platform and other tools that focus on just one specific method of data collection. If not, don’t worry. We are now going to take a look at some benefits that take the theory of CDP and put it into practice.

Benefits for marketing professionals

Sure, we know there’s a lot of data surrounding us. And it’s pretty obvious that consolidating data into a single view can create a unique customer profile that can be processed in any preferred manner. But what are the actual benefits related to marketing efforts?

• For starters, you can identify preferred customers. Face it, not all customers are created equal. With a bird’s-eye view on all available data, you can quickly find the customers who create the highest revenue, cause the least problems, or provide both.
• The reverse is also true. Some customers are simply not worth the hassle. With singular data points, the ‘troublemakers’ can slither through your business activities and cause more harm than good. With a complete overview, they will quickly rise to the surface, at which point you can devise a strategy to get them back in line  or cut them loose if that’s better for the bottom line.
• With CDP, you can analyze the data of prior customers who have stopped using your products or services. Because you have all data visualized in a concise overview, the reasons customers have left will become immediately apparent. With other tools, these clients can fall through the cracks. The marketing department can then look for possibilities to re-activate the customer.
• You can reduce advertising costs because you have more insight into your customers. Why retarget an existing customer that has already purchased your product? For instance, what if the customer profile doesn’t match the offer you’ve previously sent based on incomplete data?

These are just a couple of unique advantages. Contact me if you want to discover the many benefits your company could be enjoying.

Is CDP superior to Google Analytics (or other tools)?

MarTech tools are a dime a dozen. In the case of Google Business tools, they’re often free to use. The main problem with these tools is the myopic view they employ. They can be useful for aggregating data, but practical analysis is either cumbersome at best or simply impossible to achieve. In the end, you’ll end up exporting and importing data to other software applications or cloud-based web apps. This is not only time consuming, there’s no comprehensive overview available.

In short, marketing professionals can be left out of the loop, which is surprising considering they are the gatekeepers who can both bring in customers AND increase revenue. CDP brings structure and insight to marketers allowing them to create marketing campaigns that deliver.

This is just the tip of the iceberg on the subject of Customer Data Platforms. I’ll be happy to see how CDP’s fit into your MarTech strategy, just let me know if you need help!