CUSTOMER DATA PLATFORM (CDP): THE NEXT LEAP IN MARKETING AUTOMATION

Is Customer Data Platform (CDP) beneficial to Marketing Automation? It is one of the most often asked questions in my interactions with potential clients. The answer is straightforward. Yes, a robust MarTech tool like a CDP can strengthen your marketing automation system.

Marketing Automation systems (MAS) were designed with replacement to ESP (Email Service Provider) to ease a marketer's job. Since then, marketing automation has been a big boon, rendering automated operations such as lead screening, campaign planning to remove time-consuming processes. But the evolution didn't stop here. Today, various marketing systems wish to acquire omnichannel marketing; hence it is high time for CDP.

?Contrary to legacy technologies functioning with marketers' predefined guidelines, the use of CDP's powerful AI-based algorithms can accomplish wonders for a regular marketing automation system as marketing and adtech needs keep growing. Moreover, when AI is at play compared to typical outcomes without Intelligence, the results are more or less doubled.

CDP-Led Marketing Automation

In brief, a Customer Data Platform is a marketing tool/data platform for collecting online and offline data to put in a 360° customer profile, building profiles for real-time 1-2-1 experience with target audiences, and exposing them to all commercialization channels. With this capability, a marketer can send the correct message across all channels to the right person at the right time.

Previously, marketers depended significantly on the Data Management Platform and Demand Side Platform. These systems were highly dependent upon data from third parties that inherit privacy issues. CDP, however, concentrates only on the first-party information of an organization sourced from many digital activities and the online behavior of the customer, delivering a real version of a customer.?

For instance, suppose the digital footprint displays a desire to purchase a specific laptop brand. In that case, the advertiser will be able to deliver tailored messaging with corresponding laptop offers. This type of personalization resonates with the consumer well and motivates him to continue to purchase the funnel. In this case, the marketer may monitor the activity of the customer using the CDP. But, in the absence of a single customer view, a marketer will be unable to tailor the customer's experience and miss the mark by directing random marketing emails ignorantly.

For marketing automation tools, customer data platforms are revolutionary as:

• CDPs are much more open.
• CDPs deliver in real-time.
• CDPs can cover all channels.

The disruptive contributions of customer data platforms in MAS have essentially set a new benchmark. Any Marketing Automation tool built on a CDP can let marketers activate a real-time campaign by tracking the user's digital footprints. Using AI to a CDP, marketers can provide all their consumers with their preferred interaction channels with hyper-personalized and hyper-automated campaigns in real-time. A regular Marketing Automation System cannot do it, and an intelligent CDP scores a great time.

Based on a study by Grand View Research, the value of the marketing automation sector by 2027 might reach $8.42 billion . A CDP-based AI marketing automation will allow you to channelize this value and orchestrate an experience that significantly contributes to client acquisition, retention, and advocacy. In addition, it will enable you to eliminate data silos, create more effective and personalized communications across all channels, and ensure considerable ROI.?