It’s no longer a mere buzzword in marketing and analytics circles. A customer data platform or CDP has today evolved into a sophisticated piece of software, the lure of which few digital marketers can ignore.
As digital marketing has become increasingly dependent on customer data platforms, delivering exceptional customer experiences has become increasingly important.
That trend is likely to continue. Chief Marketing Officers now have the CDP in their arsenal to serve customers in an even better, faster, and more granular manner.
A CDP is a “data unifying software,” and introducing it to your company helps manage your customer experience across every touchpoint.
But before that, you need to know the innards of a CDP; how it works, what it takes to get it going, and so on. You’ve come to the right place for that. Here is your guide for selecting a customer data platform (CDP).
By the end of this guide, you will definitely know more about how to choose a CDP/customer data platform.
Adding a CDP on top of your MarTech stack helps manage your customer experience across every touchpoint – marketing, customer service, and product.
It absorbs an enterprise’s data from all sources – including batch, streaming, structured, and unstructured data, as well as transactional and demographic data – and makes it available 24/7 to all users within the enterprise.
How to Choose CDP Use Cases
However, in a post-COVID-19 world, as enterprises prepare for a primarily digital operating environment, many are prioritizing CDP investments.
They are spoiled for choice since a variety of CDPs are now available. However, as CDPs have evolved over the years, finding the right one and determining which one is the best in 2022 can be a challenge.
So, before committing to a vendor that provides customer data platforms, there are a few important things you should consider. To begin, it is essential to understand what a CDP is and its purpose.
According to the CDP Institute, a CDP creates a persistent, unified customer database that is accessible to other systems, putting marketing in direct control of the data unification project.
No, a CDP is not to be mistaken for a CRM, a data warehouse, or a data lake; the latter is merely a storage location for data.
A CDP is much more than that. It’s a sophisticated data hub where all things related to data converge – from data sources to customer information.
Overall, a CDP is designed to help brands make informed decisions about the right audience, providing them with the appropriate content at the right time through the most effective channel for their purpose.
Okay, but what does it really do? To cut a long story short, a CDP enables brands to make informed decisions about the right audience, providing them with the right content at the right time through the most effective channel for their purpose.
Here’s one example – A CDP helps marketers create highly personalized marketing messages across various engagement channels, from email to social media.
As every CMO will vouch for, one of the main challenges in one-on-one marketing is the requirement to activate huge data volumes when you scale to millions of customers across multiple touchpoints, and that’s something that CDP handles. It is, in fact, the perfect medicine that the doctor ordered for those who are under-utilizing their big data.
What do I need to do to obtain it? Implementing a CDP for your enterprise’s digital transformation requires careful consideration.
Turn your customer data into results >>>> Request a consultation
A few years ago, we used to refer to it as the 5-step guide, but the approach has evolved since then. Today, to zero in on the right CDP for your business, you need to ask yourself these 10 questions.
Going through this process will eventually help you select the right CDP for your marketing team.
Not to mention that, at last count, there were over 60 CDPs available on the market, adding to the overall confusion. However, first and foremost, you need to understand whether your enterprise is ready for a CDP.
Quick Checklist for Choosing an Enterprise CDP
- Are your business goals in place?
- Do you want to meet these goals with technology such as data analytics?
- Does your data sit in silos?
- Is your data accessible to the majority in your organization? If not, can you make it accessible?
There are more steps to this due diligence, but once you answer in the affirmative to the above, you can start contemplating a CDP.
5 Steps to Choosing the Best CDP
- Decide what you want out of your CDP
- List out all your tech stack and find out if the CDP you are contemplating can assimilate all that tech
- The interface is another key factor – does the CDP have a user-friendly interface?
- Does it accept inputs from multiple sources?
- Does it offer predictive scoring and machine learning? The latter is needed for accurate pattern establishment and analysis
Turn your customer data into results >>>> Request a consultation
A CDP will eventually become the backbone of an enterprise's digital transformation, enhancing customer engagement strategies and driving business growth. This deep customer understanding enables brands to deliver consistent, relevant, and highly personalized customer engagement.