3 Tips to Help Marketers Confidently Identify CDP Data Sources & Destinations

Planning for a Customer Data Platform (CDP) implementation requires an attention to detail that might feel overwhelming for marketers new to the process. One critical and often overlooked step in the planning process is the determination of data sources and destinations for a CDP. However this essential step is simple when you have a strong understanding of the relationship between your data and the CDP. First, let's start with a definition of each:

• A data source is any platform that collects/stores customer attributes or behaviors. These data sources must also make that data directly available to your CDP via a secure automated process.
• A data destination is any platform that must receive data directly from the CDP, including both automated processes and user initiated data transfers. At a minimum, critical data destinations include direct (email, SMS, or postal mail) and paid (search, display or social ads) marketing campaign activation platforms. Your organization may require other destinations, such as real-time personalization, BI platforms, and data enrichment/validation.

The total number of data sources and destinations adds to the cost and complexity of a CDP. It is a best practice to identify the critical data sources and destinations in conjunction with your IT department as early as possible.

Below I've listed three tips for marketers to consider when determining CDP data sources and destinations:

1. Not every valuable marketing tool is a CDP data source or destination

One of the key use cases for a CDP is to build a unified customer profile based on individual customer attributes and behaviors. Any tool or platform that only provides aggregate data, such as many competitive analysis tools and social listening tools, will not be necessary for building individual and unique customer records. These are extremely valuable marketing tools that should be analyzed in conjunction with your CDP's aggregate data but do not contribute to building a customer profile.

Other marketing tools collect anonymous customer data and need to be considered as CDP data sources on a case-by-case basis. Does the platform collect a user, device, or cookie ID that can be identified and stitched to an individual customer record by another data source? If the answer is yes or even maybe, it should be included and fully explored by the CDP implementation team.

2. Many platforms generate or activate customer data, but only indirectly

When asked to list marketing critical data sources and destinations, most marketers will naturally list all of the paid display and search ad platforms they invest in as both data sources and destinations. A closer examination shows that this is true, but not the entire story. Most paid advertising platforms may serve as a data destination, but do not provide customer data directly back to you. Take Google Ads, for example. You can build a highly specific audience in your CDP and export it directly into Google Ads, but the data related to the behaviors of specific customer actions are provided back to you via your web analytics tools using UTMs. In this example, Google Analytics is the data source for Google ad campaigns and Google Ads is the data destination.

Furthermore, you may not directly connect to all of your paid ad platforms. For example, if you utilize both Google Ads and Facebook Ads as paid ad platforms but connect to them via a data collaboration platform such as LiveRamp Connect, then for the purposes of the CDP you only need to account for LiveRamp Connect as a data destination.

Another consideration is the potential duplication of data within the CDP. For example, your organization may use two or more different online and offline POS solutions that all include valuable data about the purchase behavior of your customers. Each of those POS platforms could be an individual data source, but it may be more efficient to use your data warehouse as a single data source for all of your customer transaction data.

3. Some platforms are both a data source and destination

Particularly with your direct marketing platforms, such as your email and SMS service providers, it is critical for them to interact with a CDP as both a data source and destination. Consider your email service provider (ESP). This platform is the source of truth for all customer email subscription and activity data, which is critical data that will inform the individual customer profiles within the CDP. At the same time, you will want to export lists of customers for activation based on their wholistic behavior from the CDP to the ESP to create an intimate and personalized customer experience.

By considering these tips when constructing your initial list of data sources and destinations, you will shorten the time it will take your CDP implementation team to design the optimal solution.