Buyer knowledge platforms (CDPs) are a flexible software within the martech stack.
Whether or not you’re on the lookout for an answer to energy your personalization efforts, consent administration, attribution monitoring or different use circumstances the place a degree resolution is accessible, a CDP is probably going able to assembly your wants.
Listed below are 12 methods your advertising staff can use a CDP.
1. A centralized hub for knowledge and reporting
The primary and most blatant approach to make use of a CDP is as your centralized hub for knowledge and reporting. In case you don’t have already got a centralized database on your buyer knowledge, a CDP can serve you nicely in that operate.
However don’t assume that if you have already got a buyer database there’s no want for a CDP. There are many different methods to make use of a CDP successfully together with different applied sciences, as I define beneath.
2. Viewers segmentation and focusing on
Particular person techniques don’t have the complete image in your clients. For instance, your occasion administration system can inform you who got here to final yr’s convention, however not which of these attendees subscribe to your journal or bought your vacation present particular.
With all the information accessible within the CDP, you’ll be able to create complicated segments and uncover new alternatives, resembling “nobody who attended our webinar on retirement will get our retirement e-newsletter.” By aggregating knowledge from a number of sources, the CDP permits dynamic segmentation of audiences primarily based on behavioral, demographic and transactional knowledge, permitting for extra exact focusing on.
3. CDP as a supply of fact
Loads of the information in a CDP comes from different “sources of fact” — like your e mail service supplier, e-store or success home. There are some issues for which the CDP itself may be an efficient supply of fact, resembling user-specific net exercise. Your net analytic instruments additionally monitor net exercise, however typically they don’t assist you to see what particular customers are doing. A CDP can.
The CDP may also act as a supply of fact for issues it uniquely orchestrates, like on-screen dialogues or personalization.
Dig deeper: The service mannequin evolving round CDPs
4. CDP as your activation hub
A CDP is designed to deal with your entire buyer knowledge and hook up with different techniques, which might make it a very good place to orchestrate campaigns. That’s not at all times true. Generally one other system could have features that surpass the performance of your CDP. It’s typically a query of maximizing the utility of every system with the CDP appearing because the connective tissue.
For instance, a advertising automation software may be nice at orchestrating e mail journeys, however it may’t handle SMS or advertisements. Since your CDP has a broader and deeper set of information on clients, it may be the central hub for multi-track campaigns.
A carefully associated idea is buyer journey mapping. A CDP might help map out detailed buyer journeys by monitoring habits throughout varied channels and touchpoints, providing insights into how clients work together with a model over time. The CDP may also assist with cross-channel and multi-site orchestration. CDPs can synchronize messaging and campaigns throughout channels (e mail, social, net, cellular apps, and so on.) in addition to throughout a number of web sites. Orchestrating the marketing campaign from a central supply with entry to all the shopper’s knowledge can guarantee consistency of message and the relevance of the message in mild of the shopper’s present standing. A CDP permits entrepreneurs to depend on a complete view of the shopper to drive interactions throughout all contact factors.
Do not forget that simply because a system can do a factor doesn’t imply it does it nicely, or does it the way in which you’ll want on your particular use case.
5. CDP as personalization engine
A CDP is well-positioned to personalize a buyer’s expertise. A quite simple instance can be when somebody indicators up on your e-newsletter and solely offers you an e mail handle. The CDP can match that e mail handle to different information and supply the shopper’s first identify, metropolis or different knowledge to counterpoint information in different techniques and enable you personalize your advertising efforts.
A CDP may also be a robust software for content material or product suggestions, because it has entry to the shopper’s searching and subscription historical past, job title, trade, previous purchases and so forth.
Dig deeper: What the composability revolution means for CDPs
6. CDP for consent administration
Final month I painted a considerably idealistic image of full transparency and consent — the place an organization would get permission earlier than amassing any knowledge on a buyer. Whether or not you need to go that far or not, a CDP is a good place to retailer this consent data, since consent can decide the way you share knowledge between techniques. A CDP could make it simpler to adjust to privateness laws like GDPR and CCPA, particularly when dealing with opt-in/opt-out requests and consent historical past throughout channels.
A quite simple and sensible utility of consent administration within the CDP is subscriptions to e-newsletters. You may management that in your ESP or your CDP. There are benefits and downsides to each approaches – the primary query being which system wants real-time entry to the information.
7. CDPs for churn prediction
Utilizing predictive analytics, a CDP can analyze buyer habits and engagement patterns to establish at-risk clients, enabling proactive retention methods. Generally this will appear easy. In case you run a streaming service, and somebody hasn’t watched something shortly, you’ll be able to immediate them with gives which might be much like their identified preferences. Different instances, the connection between habits and on-going engagement isn’t so clear.
When you could have all of your buyer knowledge in the identical place (the CDP), you should use AI to search out these unusual relationships, resembling individuals who get at the very least two e-newsletters and take heed to your podcast usually tend to follow you, or, on the opposite aspect, individuals who used to remark in your articles and haven’t just lately are more likely to depart you.
8. CDP for onboarding and retention campaigns
Whereas it’s apparent that onboarding efforts ought to begin instantly after a purchase order, the identical is true of retention. The CDP is a good place to handle this as a result of it may establish new purchasers and handle cross-channel efforts to assist with buyer loyalty. The CDP can automate onboarding workflows and buyer retention methods with the good thing about entry to all the shopper’s knowledge. For instance, the CDP might stroll a buyer via an on-boarding guidelines on each platform the place the shopper has contact with the model.
9. CDP for income attribution
Good income attribution is a will-o’-the-wisp as a result of human selections are enormously difficult. We don’t even know why we make most of our personal selections. A marketer with a spreadsheet actually doesn’t.
Nonetheless, simply as “excellent is the enemy of executed,” so “excellent attribution” is the enemy of “ok attribution.”
A CDP can collect knowledge from all (OK, most) buyer contact factors and assist entrepreneurs make an informed guess as to which efforts have been most carefully correlated with a purchase order. That may assist entrepreneurs know the place to focus their efforts, and which efforts to revise or abandon.
10. CDP for customer support
Because the CDP offers you the closest factor to a “360 view of the shopper,” it may be a helpful useful resource for customer support reps.
Dig deeper: CDPs, their shut kin and the way to decide on between them
11. CDP for predictive modeling
AI and machine studying algorithms might help forecast buyer lifetime worth, subsequent greatest actions and different crucial enterprise metrics. Even when the CDP itself doesn’t have these capabilities, it may be the central hub the place that knowledge is saved.
12. CDP for testing and optimization
Working A/B or multivariate exams throughout totally different segments or channels utilizing the information throughout the CDP might help constantly refine advertising methods. The good thing about incorporating a CDP into such exams is that it lets you evaluate outcomes throughout segments. Your e-newsletter subscribers may react very in another way than the remainder of your viewers, and that distinction may be misplaced in a generic A/B cut up take a look at.
These use circumstances show not solely the flexibility of buyer knowledge platforms, but in addition their important position in serving to organizations harness knowledge extra successfully, driving personalised experiences, operational effectivity, and long-term buyer loyalty in an more and more aggressive market.
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