Poor quality data is the result of numerous errors that can progressively ruin the success of your marketing campaigns. In fact, according to IDG, poor data quality is one of the modern marketer’s biggest concerns, with 66% of those polled declaring data quality and accuracy as a “top priority”.
Inaccurate names, addresses and contact details, along with duplicate records and decayed information, will distort your view of a customer, resulting in poor campaign results and inaccurate insights. Worse still, it creates a bad experience for your customers whereby they either miss out on a specific offer, are targeted wrongly or receive the same message multiple times.
A Customer Data Platform (CDP) is a powerful piece of technology to ensure a clean, trustworthy and optimized customer database at all times. This is particularly true for large organizations that need to maintain high quality data across millions of customers to optimize their personalization and omnichannel strategies.
4 ways a Customer Data Platform improves data quality:
- By connecting to all your data sources a CDP will Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) the data from these disconnected sources, some in real-time and some in large batch uploads, and prepare in a standardized or normalized format. For example, if your organization collects transaction data in multiple currencies across different systems, then it is the responsibility for the CDP to ensure a consistent currency can be viewed for comparing ‘apples with apples’.
- A CDP will correct data inaccuracies, cleanse records and enhance your data by filling in missing information when the data enters the platform. This provides you with the most trustworthy insights which, in turn, allows you to make the best and most well-informed marketing decisions.
- A CDP should also merge duplicate customer information from different silos using Identity Resolution and matching rules that you define based on your own classification of a customer.
- A CDP should integrate with other systems to provide the Single Customer View or 'Golden Record' back to your marketing channels. This ensures that customer-facing departments and systems are using the same, consistent customer view to aid your omnichannel strategies.
Why is a CDP important for high quality data?
The CDP ensures better segmentation of your customer base. It enables you to cluster groups through any combination of demographic, geographic, transactional and behavioral data to target the right customers with products and services that are more relevant to their needs and wants. This will lead to higher conversion rates, encourage retention and create longer-term revenue from existing customers.
A CDP also makes campaigns more personalized. If your database is filled with inaccuracies, it will severely undermine any effective attempts at real-time personalization and hinder your attempts to speak to your customers as individuals. Using a correct name will get your promotion off on the right foot, while linking the right customer to the right product, channel, promotion or language fosters more successful, and profitable, customer experiences.
Is Data Quality Improvement a Native function of all CDPs?
The short answer is no! The Marketing Technology landscape is confusing and it is common for many technologies to reclassify their platforms functionality to fit whatever is hot in the market at the time. Remember 5 years ago when every platform became the answer to "Big Data"?! The CDP market is no different with many technologies that bring data together into one place, but do not all perform the data quality enhancements that are necessary for better marketing. Make sure to review the data quality capabilities when reviewing multiple Customer Data Platforms.
This blog article is an extract from BlueVenn’s “The Ultimate Guide to Single Customer View” eBook.
Want to know more? Download The Ultimate Guide to Single Customer View eBook
Marketing has evolved considerably over the last few decades but the mission has remained the same: to build better relationships with customers and encourage them to spend more with you. With these customers now spread across the globe, interacting 24/7 on a wide variety of devices, a unified view of the customer is critical to identify, understand and communicate with them.
