What is a Customer Data Platform?

A customer data platform is software that brings together multiple streams of data into a cohesive database that helps organize and manage customer data.

Any time a company collects data about a customer - whether in a point of sale (POS) or customer relationship management (CRM) system, website or social media interaction , an email or communication with customer service, or any other channel – all of this information can be aggregated and stored in a customer data platform (CDP).

CDP software is one of the most valuable digital tools available due to its ability to integrate with a wide variety of external sources and gather data across a large number of touchpoints. By doing so, and by intelligently matching the right interactions and transactions with the right customer profiles, it is able to build a permanent and consolidated customer database accessible to the entire organization.

What does a customer data platform do?

To understand the purpose of a customer data platform, it helps to look at some third-party definitions.

Gartner describes a CDP as "a marketing technology that unifies a company's customer data from marketing and other channels to enable customer modeling and optimize the timing and targeting of messages and offers." As this clearly shows, aggregating customer data is key to reaching the right audience with the right promotions, advertisements, and campaigns at the right time.

"A CDP is an off-the-shelf solution purchased from a third-party vendor, rather than being built in-house"

But there's more to it. The Customer Data Platform Institute defines a CDP as "packaged software that creates a persistent, unified customer database accessible to other systems." By "packaged", it means that a CDP is an out-of-the-box solution purchased from a third-party vendor, rather than being built in-house.

This is important because packaged software is typically designed for native integration without requiring a heavy load from IT and development teams. This dramatically reduces the cost, risk and downtime associated with in-house solutions. That said, CDP solutions are still highly customizable and designed to integrate with other tools in your technology stack, and marketers can set their own parameters around data collection, segmentation, and orchestration as they see fit. hear.

By collecting customer data from e-commerce platforms, email marketing, social media profiles and activities, websites, web forms, CRM and transactional systems , CDP creates unique profiles for each customer and unifies them into a single database. All departments in your business can use this information and analysis to inform their strategy.

Most often, CDP solutions are used by marketers to generate personalized messaging based on individual customer needs and preferences, or to retarget engaged consumers with recurring ads to stay top of mind.< /p> What are the benefits of customer data platforms?

All organizations understand that silos between teams, campaigns, and departments pose serious challenges. They hinder productivity, communication and collaboration. They can even harm the customer experience if marketers have to make decisions based on convoluted, contaminated, or incomplete data that is separated into disparate channels.

A CDP is designed to break down silos by storing all customer data in one place, unifying unique profiles, and using the power of analytics to derive behavioral patterns and predictions. This in turn reveals new up-sell and cross-sell opportunities.

A customer data platform does more than that though. By assembling interactions, communications and behaviors across a range of channels, a CDP also provides customer sentiment insights so your marketing teams can take a more tactical approach to building, maintaining or rehabilitating a relationship.

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More strategically, a CDP helps marketers paint a picture of their ideal buyer so they can target potential customers and retarget existing customers. They can also help you make informed predictions about your ideal buyer behaviors and align your marketing initiatives accordingly.

Why is a customer data platform important?

Customer data platforms matter because first-party data matters...