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.

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

Data privacy is a hot topic these days, with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) enforcing stricter guidelines for the use of personal data for EU citizens and the forthcoming California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) offering stringent powers to consumers who feel that their personal data has been misused.

These data management regulations, and similar laws in countries like Australia, Japan and Brazil, are starting to put pressure on organizations to establish systems and processes that demonstrate the responsible use of customer data.

Over the past three years, there has been a lot of confusion about what a Customer Data Platforms (CDP) can and can't do, and subsequently what benefits a CDP can bring to a company. Here are the 5 most frequently asked questions about Customer Data Platforms:

1. Can I use our home grown solution to create CDP-like benefits?

A Customer Data Platform (CDP) will typically be controlled and used solely by the marketing team, so the information stored will be customer-related (contact information, customer activities/behaviors and transactions). Its raison d’être is to create a Single Customer View (SCV) by normalizing the customer data collected from marketing and operational systems across the business, and drawing together all known information about the customer into one ‘Golden Record’. During the Single Customer View creation process the CDP will cleanse the data, correct incorrect or inconsistent formatting, and merge duplicate entries. The data is also persistent, which means that it is retained indefinitely (unless required to be removed by law), including every change or process, which is then timestamped for 100% traceability.

Nobody buys a new car in a hurry. After all, a car is the second most expensive purchase that people routinely make (after a home), and those purely interested in utility or seeking an emergency replacement tend to shop second hand. A new car is a status symbol. It represents who you are, how you live, and what you like to do in your spare time – and that’s without thinking about keeping your family safe, the likely weather and road conditions, and your mileage and environmental preferences. Automotive clients know what they’re looking for and are willing to hold off until they find it. So, the buying journey can take years and approaching the right customer in the right way is absolutely critical.

Customer Data Platform series: 5 of 5

Over the next 5 weeks, read a new blog each week from our CDP Series as our CMO helps you to understand the CDP landscape, capabilities and functionality.

Let's just get something straight; it's common (and understandable) to assume that 'tag management' means organizing either the tags that make blogs more searchable or the meta tags used to improve the SEO of a web page. That isn't what we're talking about here.

This blog focuses on management of the snippets of code (tags) embedded into a web page to record information when a customer accesses and interacts with a company’s website or mobile app, or to help launch the functionality of marketing technology products. In the latter case, the vendor of the martech will request that the customer embeds the code. Just like a Customer Data Platform, the main function of a Tag Management System is to help manage large amounts of first-party information collected by companies about their customers. 

Customer Data Platform series: 4 of 5

Over the next 5 weeks, read a new blog each week from our CDP Series as our CMO helps you to understand the CDP landscape, capabilities and functionality.

The basic raison d'être of both a Master Data Management (MDM) solution and a Customer Data Platform (CDP) is similar. Both exist to ensure that a business has a supply of carefully curated, unified, accurate and reliable corporate data, a single trusted view to deliver insights and drive business innovation, but that's where the similarities end.

For a start, MDM is a discipline and a set of processes designed to transform organization-wide data, especially in large companies, while a CDP is a packaged software product with a specific purpose to deliver a single view of the customer that the marketing department can use for the improved personalization of marketing campaigns. Another key difference is who stands to benefit from their use and how they are managed within the organization.

According to Gartner, “Access to customer data, in real-time, unifying profiles across channels and ability to measure comprise the competitive playing field that will define the coming years,” allowing retailers to effectively personalize cross-channel customer journeys.

A Customer Data Platform, or CDP, helps by bringing in huge amounts of online and offline customer data from a multitude of sources, then cleansing, deduplicating and unifying this information into a Single Customer View that can then be accessed by all other marketing channels, platforms and business intelligence tools.

To then unify these profiles across channels, look for a CDP with ‘orchestration’ or campaign management capabilities, which will function as a ‘smart hub’ to orchestrate and trigger all your channels from a central decision-making point.

Customer Data Platform Series: 2 of 5

Over the next 5 weeks, read a new blog each week from our CDP Series as our CMO helps you to understand the CDP landscape, capabilities and functionality.

A question that we often get asked is whether Data Management Platforms (DMP) and Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) are interchangeable?

More specifically, can a DMP be used to deliver the same results as a CDP, and if not, why not?