Companies gather data from a variety of sources such as web cookies, smart speakers, social media, mobile phones, and more. Marketers consider these data as a gold mine, especially if they can get them in a useful format.
Customer Data Platform (CDP) includes pre-built connectors to systems. That is to hold customer data, which allows fast and easy data access for the marketing team. A CDP can help you in understanding your customer base and determining their needs and wants. It will also help you who are your customers who are high-value, loyal, or longstanding.
What is a CDP and how does it work?
Before we dive into the advantages of using CDP, let us first define what it is and how does it work.
A CDP refers to a packaged software that helps marketers in collecting and unifying data with a single, consistent database. It can link information from different sources to build a unified view of each customer.
This software is effective in collecting and aggregating information like customer’s records of interaction, preferences, and purchase history. You can link this software to other systems, and use it in collecting, managing, analyzing, and sharing data necessary for creating targeted, tailored marketing campaigns.
As consumers interact with brands through multiple channels, you can get important information from each interaction. You can use a CDP to ingest first-party data from offline and online sources. The software will then standardize and transform the collected data by matching every customer identity from each system. After that, it will combine the data into a single profile of every individual customer. Lastly, it will reformat the profile data to make it available to other marketing applications and systems.
Now, it’s time to reveal the 8 pros and using CDP.
1. All-in-one place
With CDP, no need for you to struggle in combining and utilizing multiple data. This means you do not need to get confused about whether you will use first-, second, or third-party data since they are available in one place.
In order to be more customer-centric, you need to consider a single view of your customers. Good thing, a CDP allows you to seize online and offline data from a variety of touch-points in one place. Besides, it will help you have a deeper understanding of your customers.
2. 360-degree customer view
In identifying every part of the transactions, products, and customer journey, a 360-degree customer view plays a crucial role. You can use it to understanding customer behavior and provide them a more personalized experience than before.
Keep in mind that a comprehensive view of your customer allows your service, sales, and marketing team to strategically promote products or services at the right audience at the right time and place. Using CDP, you can easily recognize your customers when they contact you. All the relevant data about your customers can be extracted right after the purchase.
The 360-degree customer view gives you a knowledge about your potential buyers. You can use this knowledge to create a powerful campaign to market your products or services while increasing the conversion rate.
3. Increased revenue
As a business owner, you know that an effective marketing strategy and high conversion rate will lead to increased revenue.
Once you used CDP correctly, you can expect a rise in revenue. If it is your final business goal, then make sure to use a CDP to implement data from multiple sources. This will help your business build a complete view of the customer. Sending a well-targeted audience with the right message calls for increased customer engagement and brand recognition. As a result, you will get higher conversion rates.
4. New audience segments
In order for you to more easily segment your customers and apply basic to advanced analytics, it is essential to keep information in one place.
A CDP will help in terms of new customer segmentation such as discount shoppers, loyal customers, and online spenders. Besides, it’s a lot easier to divide each of the segments according to location, age, and gender. With smaller sections, messages can be more customized, and the targeting can be more specific.
5. Optimized campaign with long-term learning
A lot of marketers utilize CDP to see both the efficiency and result of the campaign for a more detailed analysis. That way, they can determine the areas for improvement and improve the attempts of promoting the products or services for the next time. Besides, you will have an in-depth understanding of the customers that you can use for your next campaign.
6. Reduced vendor lock-in
One of the best things about CDP is that you can have a dramatic reduction in vendor lock-in. The data persistence can be found in the information lake. As a result, it’s a lot easier to switch applications, especially that there is a smooth migration.
7. Cost-saving
Do you want to save a significant amount of money while increasing revenue? If so, a CDP has something effective to do with that.
Mind that data is primarily persistent in the customer data management platform instead of in the application. This means that the costs can be reduced dramatically. Not only that, but you can also save a significant amount of time in collecting and cleansing data.
8. Compliance
Privacy regulations are among the top benefits of CDP. For example, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) started the trend of privacy regulations and targets companies that collect consumer data. For such a situation, you need to make an effort to the GDPR compliant for improved operations.
If you have data in one place, then it means that you can become an E-Privacy and GDPR compliant. So, you can anonymize your contacts and expect for data portability and insights requests. You can execute these tasks even with one source.
Conclusion
With CDP, it’s a lot easier for you to predict what your customers need tomorrow. This piece of technology is very helpful, especially that today’s consumers expect brands to deliver personalized experiences. Keep in mind that your ability to improve customer experienced by collecting, integrating, and using customer data make a significant competitive advantage.
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