Customer Data Platform: Delivering the Right Engagement, to the Right Customer, at the Right Time
Modern marketing is driven by data. However, even in this age of data-driven economies – where almost 60% of the world population is connected online – businesses often lose the data that is generated by their websites, mobile apps, and other digital channels.
How can this problem be stemmed? By deploying efficient tools that capture consumer data across touchpoints (that otherwise exist in disparate technology silos) and transform it into intelligent, actionable insights.
Enter : Customer Data Platforms
A technology that comes with a distinct advantage over other legacy systems and boosts marketing efficiency.
It is no surprise that CDPs are gaining growing traction across industries. This cutting-edge technology powers comprehensive data-driven marketing. It connects to a wide range of systems and data sources across enterprises and ingests all types of data – be it real-time interaction data, campaign data, product data, customer support data, device, or IoT data.
The sheer depth of data that CDPs can process has propelled it from a `good-to-have’ to a `must-have’ technology for enterprises. By using, managing, and analyzing data, CDPs help marketers build smart campaigns.
There are some compelling reasons why AI-powered Customer Data Platforms like Easyrewardz Zence have metamorphosed into a marketer’s favorite:
It’s a hub of customer data. It consolidates customer data and stitches it into unified customer profiles. The CDP sits at the center of an enterprise’s data ecosystem, connecting all the channels, platforms, and products that a customer uses.
It provides a Single View of Customer. The CDP captures all customer actions, across touchpoints, syncs the information, and attributes the right actions to the right customer.
It stores, connects, and unifies customer data, giving marketers a holistic view of their customers – irrespective of the different devices they use or marketing channels they interact with.
It makes data actionable for marketers. With consolidated data at hand, Zence helps marketers derive insights from it, to deliver unified, personalized, omnichannel experiences to their customers.
In this article, we will dive into the CDP success story to understand why it’s become the CRM tool to watch out for, why businesses need a CDP, and how the platform stands out from other tools in the same space.
Decoding the CDP mania
There have been some recent and defining global developments that got more and more businesses to gravitate towards adopting a Customer Data Platform to collate and comprehend customer data. Here are the most outstanding events:
Rapid digital transformation in a post-Covid world: Ever since the world went into lockdown, and people turned to online shopping, digital channels have made an undisputed mark for themselves in the marketing mix. This, in turn, has accelerated the need to manage customer interactions across digital channels.
End of the third-party cookie era: In the coming future, browsers will no longer be supporting third-party cookies. This means the cookie-based targeting route on ad platforms is going to turn redundant. Marketers will now have to depend on first-party data to know their customers better – and CDPs enable tracking and storing user information using first-party cookies.
Growing need for smart customer interactions: Brands are increasingly looking at onboarding the power of AI and machine learning in order to know their customer better and to personalize interactions. AI-driven tools like CDPs help enterprises record every customer interaction, join the dots across touchpoints and use the insights to create meaningful interventions.
Types of customer data – and why businesses need the RIGHT data
Modern enterprises run on the power of customer data. However, the data that marketers have access to is often irrelevant, incomplete, and siloed.
This is where the CDP stands out as an out-of-the-box solution – because it does more than just collecting data. CDPs collect the right kind of data. As the world of digital marketing and online shopping witnesses a boom in channels and data types, marketers are facing an outpouring of customer data. Everything from ad impressions, and product usage, to customer service interactions, have turned into data collection hubs.
And there are some main types of customer data that are sourced from here
- Behavioral data: Obtained from a customer’s interactions with a brand across touchpoints. It includes website
visits, apps downloaded, games, social media engagement, and the number of devices used. - Qualitative data: Takes into account a customer’s product preferences and other markers like customer service
rating. - Demographic or Identity data: This includes information like age, gender, nationality, education, hobbies and
interest, profession and employment, name, date of birth, and contact details. - Transactional data: Broadly covers transactions such as purchases, returns, payments, signups, reservations,
and subscriptions. - Device level data: This information ranges from cookie IDs, device IDs to IP addresses.
With so much data available, why do marketers face information-related challenges?
As the data is siloed it makes it difficult for enterprises to get a detailed view into their customers, they likes and dislikes. And when these precise data-driven insights are not at the marketer’s fingertips, decision-making becomes difficult and ineffective.
For customer data to be effective, it has to be taken out of siloed systems, so that marketers have easy access to the information and can get a unified and enriched view of their users. The CDP does this in a quick and seamless manner, as its core functionality is to analyze data flowing in from multiple sources, provide a 360-degree view of each user, and top it with insights and recommendations.
How do CDPs collect and collate the massive amounts of customer data that flows into an enterprise? It’s a four-step process:
- Data Acquisition: The CDP integrates all the data sources into one place
- Unification: All user data is collated at a single source to provide a unified view of customer actions
- Data Enrichment: Build reports and dashboards to view customer’s actions, as well as marketing campaigns and goals
- Data Activation: All the information is processed in one place and used to activate and mobilize data that can be used to create precise and personalized marketing campaigns
Modern enterprises need a Unified, Comprehensive view of their Customers
As purchase journeys turn digital and marketers raise the bar for creating compelling customer experiences, global companies are onboarding CDPs to meet rising user expectations. Here are some reasons why enterprises are onboarding tools that provide them with a unified, comprehensive, and single window view of their customers.
Brands are focusing on knowing their customers
E-commerce makes up 42% of all B2B purchases today. By 2023, it is expected to reach 58% of total retail sales in the US. That’s a huge number, and companies are rolling out the red carpet to woo online shoppers. To stay competitive, they are creating personalized experiences throughout the customer lifecycle by converting user data into insights – at speed. CDPs are making the cut as the technology of choice, as they help increase an understanding of the customer journey, personalize experiences, and improve user satisfaction.
Building seamless customer experiences has become the cornerstone of business success
Tools that offer seamless customer data management and analytics help enterprises address their business priorities better by creating fulfilling user experiences.
3 main reasons why companies invest in CDPs
Improve customer
satisfaction
Personalize user
experiences
Get an insightful and unified
view into the customer journey
Getting data insights is not enough. It has to be made actionable
Enterprises often find that turning fragmented data points into actionable customer insights is the biggest challenge that they face while creating user interactions. This is getting marketers to invest in CDPs – and create the personalized experiences that modern customers expect.
CDP Use Cases
Custom data platforms provide intelligence and impetus to modern marketing campaigns – by collecting, collating, & processing data that helps brands communicate better with their customers and create incisive brand campaigns.
Here are some use cases that highlight how CDPs play a key role in the customer acquisition and retention journey
Customized Content
Once a customer has interacted with a brand, the CDP steps in to use identity and behavioral data to provide customized content to users.
Personalized Recommendations
CDPs gather transactional and qualitative data that boost cross-selling and upselling. For instance, marketers can understand a user’s purchase patterns to provide personalized product recommendations and discount coupons.
360-degree Customer View
By studying a customer’s online footprints and activities, CDPs enable marketers to get insights into both their virtual and offline shopping and purchase patterns. This gives brands a complete view of their customers.
Identify customers with Low Involvement
If a customer is interacting less with a brand, then a CDP helps to raise an immediate red flag. It helps marketers identify these customers and thus make special attempts – through personalized messaging – to re-build the relationship.
Customer Segmentation
A CDP has the power to segment customers into multiple, focused groups. Marketers can use this segmentation to engage with their users with personalized content on social media and other channels.
Deploy Retargeting Campaigns
A CDP doesn’t just collect data. It provides powerful customer insights as well. These insights can be used by brands to create retargeting campaigns and use look-alike modeling to attract new users who are similar to their current ones.
Build better Customer Profiles
CDPs use predictive data (like the possibility of purchase and churn) to improve the quality of customer profiles and target them with personalized marketing messages.
Reach Customers where they are
By analyzing transactional data, a CDP enables marketers to reach their customers on the platforms and channels they use to make purchases. They can also use this information to send relevant and timely messages, and tailor loyalty programs as per user preferences.
Personalize at Scale
A CDP helps marketers to understand their customers, how they interact with marketing campaigns, and how they move around on their website. CDPs use dynamic widgets to deliver personalized content to difference audience segments.
Get Rid of Data Silos
Data plays a key role in making the right marketing decisions. CDPs sync customer information from across an enterprise’s systems, organizes it into a single source of truth, and allows every department to have easy and instant access to the data. This means every section of an organization has the same information and can pursue a unified business goal.
Why Zence Customer Data Platform
Features that make the Zence CDP a Must-Have for Businesses
Zence Customer Data Platform, brings a host of features to the table for businesses. From allowing enterprises to listen to their customer data, drive engagement, and tap into the power of actionable data insights, here is a list of the key points of Zence CDP
Empowers businesses to get detailed insights into their customers
In modern, connected economies, where customers have more choices & higher expectations, enterprises struggle to get a unified view of users to deliver hyper-personalized customer experiences across channels. CDP help marketers understand customer behavior throughout the user journey. This enables them to make pinpointed and accurate business decisions related to marketing, product development, & sales.
The Zence Edge
This unified solution gives marketers access to a 360-degree single view of customers. It also captures customer interactions with a brand across all touchpoints and channels.
Creates intelligent and real-time segmentation
In an age when customers don’t just buy goods and services, but also experiences, competing and winning requires that brands treat every customer as unique. CDPs go beyond data and bring insights and data segmentation to life, giving complete data prowess to brands. This, in turn, boosts CX, loyalty, and CLV.
The Zence Edge
It creates customer segments on the basis of demographic and behavioral data, using Tag Manager. This enables brands to personify their segments, in order to understand customer motivation and drive profitable action.
Adds wings to customer engagement
New-age customers have endless choices when it comes to the number of touch points or brands available to them. The downside for marketers is that it becomes increasingly difficult for them to gain their user’s attention, engage with them, or build lasting relationships. Challenges in unifying data and fragmented technology systems are the two main roadblocks to creating a successful customer engagement strategy. Both these problems are effectively addressed by CDPs.
The Zence Edge
It designs personalized offers that are based on customer purchase behavior. It empowers marketers to increase conversions by optimizing their marketing initiatives with relevant insights that are powered by the solution across touch points.
Helps onboard the advantage of accessing real-time reports
CDP solutions are aimed at collecting user data from multiple tools, centralizing it in one database, and making it available to other systems in real-time. Brands can use this information to create accurate customer portraits and improve their marketing and sales strategies. The role of a CDP is to be at the center of an organization’s marketing tools. It facilitates the synchronization of customer data so that the other tools can leverage the same fully-updated customer profile at any given touch point or interaction, in real-time. Brands can thus engage with customers with the most in-depth insights possible.
The Zence Edge
Brands can access all consumer transactional and engagement data on a one-stop dashboard and measure the performance of their marketing initiatives with real-time reports.
Sum Up: CDPs are a solution for every marketing need
CDPs are comprehensive, one-stop solutions that, when used correctly, provide brands with deep insights into their customers. This knowledge can then be used to improve marketing, sales, and even your product. Besides, providing a unified customer view, the real value it brings is by making data actionable. Marketers have multiple questions about their customers – the segment they belong to, their last purchase, are they likely to churn, their purchase intent, or their predicted future value. CDPs provide these answers – and more – at the click of a button.
If you want to know how best to understand your customers and gain precise insights into how best to engage with them, a CDP is a perfect solution for you.
