If you want to know how a CDP will impact your cross-channel marketing capabilities, take a look at our infographic. Using the findings of a 2020 global study by BlueVenn and London Research, which surveyed 235 organizations with annual revenues of at least $50m, it shows why CDP use has increased during the pandemic and how a Customer Data Platform enables marketers to offer a better customer experience, both online and offline. In particular, it demonstrates why CDP-equipped companies were 2X as likely to outperform against their marketing goals in the year leading up to the pandemic as non-CDP users.

The CDP Institute (CDPI) is basically THE body providing key resources for organizations that are researching Customer Data Platforms. As a vendor-neutral organization, its main aim is to act as an authority on customer data management and distribute materials or news that will help marketers to make the best use of their data. Every year the CDPI member survey is sent out in an effort to better understand the CDP buyers’ needs around customer data management.

For those that want to read the full CDP Institute Member Survey 2020 report, you can access it here, or for a summary of the key findings from the report, alongside commentary from Anthony Botibol (BlueVenn's VP of Marketing and CDP Institute Advisory Board member), read on:

In 2016, a new form of technology, christened the Customer Data Platform, started to gain a lot of attention in the marketing world for its ability to connect disparate data sources, such as a brand's CRM, email, marketing automation and eCommerce platforms, and do away with data silo issues. Essentially, a Customer Data Platform (CDP) will centralize all customer data, unify that data into a Single Customer View, and then enable you to push it to whatever execution or analysis tool needs it.

Over the years, marketers have bought, replaced and re-bought countless technologies with the aim of delivering 1-to-1 customer experiences. The different marketing platforms each help to store customer data, deliver insights to the business, and transfer the information to the marketing, sales and customer services teams, to aid their ability to deliver optimal customer experiences that drive more revenue.

The problem with acquiring new technologies, however, is that each new platform you add to your technology stack will create these silos of data, but also create silos of insights and a siloed way of executing a message or experience to the customer. When you consider that there are over 8,000+ marketing technologies to choose from (social media, content management, mobile, advertising etc), and that a marketing team may use as many as 40 tools to manage customer data, over time we've created a mass of silos everywhere.

A Customer Data Platform has the potential to revolutionize your business by ingesting data from each one of your marketing platforms, unifying it to create a single source of truth for customer data, then using that information to power marketing campaigns for better prediction, targeting and personalization. But the decision to build or buy a CDP isn’t one that any company should take lightly, as it will have repercussions throughout your brand for months, or even years, to come. It will affect the setup time before you can start benefiting from your new technology, it will affect the costs you’ll need to factor into the budget, and it will have lasting impact on your ability to compete in what, at the moment, is a very turbulent and uncertain market.

As we all know, the world changed with the outbreak of COVID-19 and that change has dramatically affected our customers’ buying behaviors. A recent survey found that 41% of respondents are now shopping online for things they would normally purchase in-store. While this change in behavior may be through necessity, it does however create many issues for marketers who are under increased pressure to keep up with these changing demands, and ensure they provide a personalized and meaningful customer experience, no matter the customer’s chosen engagement channel(s).

A use case is a statement of what a marketer wants to get out of a project, system or platform. Whether they work for a single or multi-brand retailer, if the business operates on at least two channels, marketers are going to face these use cases as the Top 5 requirements for a Customer Data Platform (CDP):

When it comes to data protection, a storm has long been brewing. First came worries about Alexa eavesdropping in people’s homes and recording conversations (in November 2018 a New Hampshire judge ruled that audio captured in the home of a murder victim could be used as evidence in court). Then the Cambridge Analytica-Facebook scandal broke, with data harvested off people’s Facebook accounts being used to drive political advertising, potentially affecting the U.S. election result. Consumers’ growing concern has led to harsh new data protection regulations – GDPR came into force in Europe on 25th May 2018, then the California Consumer Privacy Act became effective in the state on 1st January 2020.

There’s a lot of hype these days about omnichannel marketing and the importance of crafting a consistent customer experience across every platform. The fact is, though, that all channels are NOT equal when it comes to customer engagement. According to industry analysts Gartner, an Adobe 2018 Consumer Email Survey found that 50% of consumers named email marketing as their preferred brand communications platform, compared with a maximum of 20% who said they preferred any other channel.

Confused about Customer Data Platforms (CDP) and how they can benefit your marketing strategies and campaigns? Well, you’re not alone! A new Winterberry Group report holds the answers you need. It clarifies what should be regarded as the core capabilities of a CDP, which capabilities are ‘nice to have’, and what strengths are exhibited by various categories of the technology. It also gives an overview of the market and where it’s headed.

Learn more about what defines a CDP in the extract below, or download the full report here.

According to Winterberry Group’s analysis, the capabilities of BlueVenn’s CDP are industry leading; report provides clarity as to what core capabilities a CDP should have and how they deliver best value to marketers