How to Select the Right CDP for Your Marketing Strategy
Your technology needs to support your execution
With data management and analytics tools becoming more numerous and sophisticated, it is difficult for CMOs to decide which tool is best for their business. This blog post will discuss the benefits of using a customer data platform (CDP) for your marketing strategy. We will also provide tips on selecting the right CDP for your needs.
A CDP is a tool that consolidates customer data from multiple sources into a single platform. This allows for more accurate segmentation and personalization in marketing campaigns. In addition, a CDP can help you to understand your customers’ needs and preferences better.
CDP-selection Considerations
When picking a CDP, keep the following things in mind:
- The size of your customer database: A CDP should be able to handle a large amount of data. If you have a small customer database, you may not need a CDP or a CRM. To be bias-free, you also need a sizable audience to get real results for analysis.
- Your budget: CDPs vary in price depending on the features and functionality. All CDPs deliver customer value in a box. For example, VIEWN’s cloud-based CDP includes embedded segmentation analytics, so you don’t need to maintain a development team.
- Your team: Do you have a development team that will build and maintain the solution? Does your team have the customer-centric mind to implement and utilize personalization software, or does the team need training? Are you hoping to be able to set something up and then have control of the customer data yourself?
No matter the size of your team, you can’t do everything at once and expect great results. For example, after nearly 50 articles, LinkedIn’s Algorithm has finally decided that I mean business. Even for the best growth marketer, the content strategy takes time to work out. You need to prioritize.
And there are just as many ways marketing, analytics, digital experience, and other growth-focused teams responsible for interacting with customers and accelerating business growth can leverage a CDP to streamline day-to-day operations and realize better business outcomes- more revenue and greater loyalty.
1: Leverage customer data and learn from segments to GROW RELATIONSHIPS WITH CUSTOMERS from your direct to consumer channel.
Situation: For companies that face fundamental challenges in acquiring customer data — think of skincare, femtech, or home goods business-businesses and manufacturers that rely on traditional retailers and eCommerce marketplaces (i.e., Amazon) to sell their goods. It’s difficult to understand their customer, let alone devise smarter engagement strategies that increase satisfaction and loyalty. According to Forbes, this issue isn’t new, but it’s been amplified recently as eCommerce has seen 55% growth. As more consumers have shifted online, the pressure is on these companies to prioritize DTC relationships to maintain relevance.
Devise smarter engagement strategies that lead to satisfaction and loyalty using the customer data you have collected for the last three years.
The right CDP for the job can connect easily to the shopping platforms you use and merge that data to give you the whole picture of who your customers are. For example, let’s say you sell luxury kids’ clothing and toys through social selling via Instagram/Shopify and by keyword search on Amazon. You want to see the total sales and customers from both channels. Find out have purchased on both platforms; that repurchase means they are valuable to nurture and engage on email and social ads. With integrated data at your fingertips, you can discover new customer insights, build smarter segments, and apply analytics to better understand and act in real-time on customers’ buying habits, browsing behavior, product preferences, and more.
Look for software features like
- Ease of integration with Shopify and Amazon. That connection shouldn’t take weeks or months to build with outside development years.
- Real-time interactions. You need a CDP that can take data as you need it, whether weekly, quarterly, or on-demand. Find out how soon you will know you have that data. Note, there do exist limitations depending frequency, size, and format of the platform themselves. For example, at this time, I can only request customers from Amazon once a day. Any more than that than it cannot handle the number of requests from all stores.
- Segmentation and analytics. This says it all. Not all CDPs have embedded analytics and instead require you to implement a presentation layer to filter and join data for reports.
2: Prioritize and promote products offered to an individual on your eCommerce site based on the content they’ve been consuming on its media site — driving big improvements in conversions among a more engaged audience
Situation: Brands realized they have the opportunity to unify and activate the first-party data they already collect to enhance their customer engagement efforts and build out new revenue streams via product lines, partnerships, and co-marketing efforts. You have been building a community, appearing in podcats, or guest publishing to a relevant magazine; now convert those already engaging with you.
Use all that data to develop scalable audience monetization strategies.
Companies face challenges in terms of privacy and compliance before even executing a new consent-focused, first-party data strategy. Soon-to-be extinct third-party cookies have become a source of advertising revenue. Businesses have reported a 30% increase in advertising ever since Apple started introducing their owner privacy rules. Still, you need unified first-party data set they can monetize and use to accelerate growth; that is where a CDP comes in.
Your CDP needs to persistently store consent status in individual-level profiles so that teams can easily discern which individuals have opted in (or out) of marketing communications and activate their data when and where they need it with confidence. Moreover, retailers and publishers can package and sell their consented first-party data to partners to utilize in their marketing — all with consent in mind. When you have the trust of your customers, they are not only willing to buy from you again but buy more.
Look for software features like
- preference data: in addition to storing statuses at the profile level, your CDP can also store and provide for analysis preference information like, “Send me updates Monthy” or “Unsubscribed for notifications but subscribed to email.” The customer will tell you the kind of engagement they would like. This is key when it comes to email.
- GDPR, CCPA: Privacy regulations change continuously and differ between geographic regions and consumer applications. For example, it may be unlawful to store and use facial recognition in Illinois. Your CDP should be able to work as privacy in a box with the ability to validate and delete any customer requesting so.
- Team management and security access: Not all CDPs can assign team members and roles. Consider the type of siloed information you may need. For example, performance metrics shared in a co-marketing initiative can be siloed from the rest of the CDP when shared with a partner.
Now that you know how to select the right CDP for your marketing strategy, it’s time to implement one into your data-driven marketing plans. Doing so will enable you to unify your customer data, achieve scale in your marketing efforts, and improve customer engagement. If you’re looking for a CDP to help you do all of that, look no further than VIEWN. Our no-coding required CDP was designed by marketers to help marketers unify their data, segment their audiences, and activate their data across channels.
Schedule a demo today to learn more about how VIEWN can help you with your marketing efforts.
