Benefits of a Customer Data Platform (CDP)

Customer Data Platform

In future articles, we will discuss and assess each of the points that help us improve the customer experience (easy and intuitive browsing, appealing designs, structured content, etc.), but in today's post we will focus on content customisation and how a tool such as a CDP can help.

What is a CDP? Why has it become a hot topic?

If we focus on the technical definition, a CDP is a system for managing your customers' data that relies on a unified and persistent database that can be accessed in real time by external systems of the organisation. The data can be of any type, such as customers' conduct or behaviour patterns in your online platforms or mobile applications, transactions made, demographic data, data from other sources (CRM, etc.). As a result, you can have all of your customers' data centralised in a single repository, giving you a 360º view of the data, as well as letting you segment it into groups to better organise and use the data.

How can a CDP help you?

As we mentioned, a CDP solution provides real-time information that will let you generate customised and enriching experiences for each of your customers. You can even generate one-to-one experiences since, thanks to CDP, you will be able to personally identify (thanks to a unique identifier) which customer is integrated into your platforms, and generate exclusive content for each of your customers.

In summary, although there are slight differences between the functionalities of the various CDPs available on the market, they all have four characteristics in common that will help you with your marketing strategy:

1. The ability to create unified, persistent and individual customer profiles (the 360º customer view mentioned above).
2. The ability to configure segments based on different data (occupation, interests, age, location).
3. The ability to target responses to each customer depending on where they are in your funnel (regardless of the funnel's objective).
4. The ability to assess your customers' historical data so you can identify patterns and trends, and use this data to predict behaviours and anticipate your customers' needs.

How do I choose the CDP that's right for me? What should I consider?

First, it is important to note that there is no such thing as a "perfect CDP", or even a CDP that's better than another one; rather, there are minor variations in price and features that you have to take into account when selecting the right platform. And that's the key: knowing how you're going to use the CDP before selecting it. Here are some ideas for the most common use cases:

• I have a lot of customer data, but it's spread out among different sources, which complicates the process of accessing it.
• I don't have a 360 view of my customers, since I have the data that I collect from my online platforms on the one hand (online data), and the purchases and transactions registered in my CRM (offline data) on the other.
• I want to create customised and unique experiences for my customers based on what I know about them, and even anticipate their needs.

Once you decide your usage preferences, you can proceed to study candidate CDPs. Another tip we can give you that you should keep in mind is:

• What CDP are my "colleagues" in the sector using? Why?
• Of all the solutions available on the market, how compatible will it be with the tools I already have? Suppose that your organisation already has solutions from the Adobe Experience Cloud suite. In this case, our initial recommendation would be to focus on analysing what Adobe's CDP solution can offer you.
• Make sure that the CDP complies with GDPR requirements, such that the platform is able to stop collecting data or delete it if requested by the customer.

Another possibility you should consider if you are in doubt is requesting a demo from the manufacturer of the CDP. This can be a general product demo, but our recommendation is that you make your needs clear so they can at least tell you how their platform would address said needs, or request a partner to prepare a PoC with specific use cases to clear up any and all doubts.