Yes, CDPs are Still Game Changing in 2024

After my last blog post about Customer Data Platforms, I received some feedback that I am anti-CDP. That couldn't be further from the truth. These platforms are not just amazing, they are transformative. They provide marketers with a powerful tool when implemented correctly and aimed at the appropriate uses. The three ideal uses for the CDP are:?

Real-Time Customer Profiles

Real-Time Identity Stitching

Real-Time Audience Management

These tools empower marketers with the control and capability to deliver personalized experiences at scale.??

?

Real-Time Customer Profiles

A real-time customer profile is not just a powerful asset; it's a game changer in a marketer's arsenal, made possible through CDPs. These profiles compile all the data you have on an individual to build out the interests, actions, and ultimately the full relationship that person has with the brand. The best CDPs have the functionality to build dynamic profiles; they are continuously updated with every customer interaction through web browsing, making purchases, or engaging on social media. This instantaneous data consolidation doesn't just allow for a comprehensive view of the customer; it ensures a view that is always updated. CDPs that don’t update the profile in real-time, at a minimum, should expose a batch profile, which is a snapshot of the customer's data at a specific time, read-only in real-time. The batch profile is typically built in the Customer Data Warehouse and synced into the CDP in micro-batches determine by business needs.? And this is why Data Engineering is still key, back to my previous post.

Benefit:

• Improved Customer Understanding: By having a holistic view of customer behaviors and preferences that updates in real-time, marketers can deliver highly personalized experiences. This immediacy ensures that the marketing messages and offers are always relevant, greatly enhancing the effectiveness of engagement.

?Use Case:

• Personalization:?The real-time customer profile can inform experiences on owned media. For instance, a leading e-commerce company used CDPs to build a comprehensive view of their customers, including past behaviors, predictive models, and eligibility requirements. This profile was then updated with real-time behaviors, allowing the company to tailor their product offerings and marketing messages to each consumer. This complete view of the customer informs the personalization engine, ensuring a highly relevant product or experience.

Real-Time Identity Stitching

Identity stitching is another critical function of CDPs that solves a common challenge in customer data management: recognizing customers and prospects across different platforms and devices. CDPs achieve this by merging multiple identities linked to the same individual into a that single customer profile we talked about earlier. This process is vital for maintaining the accuracy and completeness of customer profiles.

Benefit:

·?????? Consistent Customer Experience Across Channels: With a unified customer identity, businesses can ensure that their messaging remains consistent across all channels. This consistency is critical to building trust and a key factor in creating a seamless customer experience, a must-have for fostering brand loyalty today.

Use Case:

• Abandon Browse Retargeting:?Using third-party identity platforms, like Merkury, to connect current browsing customers to past profiles will allow brands to send follow-up emails about products and services customers viewed on-site for better relevancy.

Real-Time Audience Management & Orchestration

Real-time audience management allows marketers to segment and target audiences more effectively based on current data. CDPs enable the creation of segments using real-time insights, allowing for dynamic adjustments to ?best meet the needs of different customer groups. The capabilities of the CDP to unify profiles, stitch identity, and manage audiences empower marketers to orchestrate experiences across channels.

?Benefit:

• Dynamic Audience Management: By understanding audience segments in real time, marketers can immediately adjust campaigns to capitalize on emerging trends or mitigate issues as they arise. This agility leads to more effective campaigns and higher ROI.

?Use Case:

• First-Party Data Retargeting in Paid Media:?Create rules in the CDP to move high-value customers into different audience segments. Marketers can use these segments in digital media for near real-time targeting. Audience syndication is especially helpful when you have PII as a replacement for third-party cookies.

?

Where CDPs can improve

One area where I see potential for improvement in CDPs is API access to their data from third-party platforms. Most CDPs offer a closed ecosystem that ensures data security and integrity, some users may prefer a more flexible, composable solution that allows them to connect via API. API integration would make the customer profile available to decisioning engines, customer service, and third-party platforms. However, it's important to note that this could introduce potential performance issues, security risks and data governance challenges, which marketers must manage carefully.?

Conclusion

Integrating real-time customer profiles, stitching identity, and audience management & orchestration into a single platform provides a game-changing toolset for delivering personalized customer experiences at scale. CDPs simplify the complexity of customer data and transform it into actionable insights that drive engagement, loyalty, and growth. If you're ready to take your customer experience and engagement strategies to the next level, consider exploring the potential of CDPs for your business.?

?