9 examples of CDPs in business
As customers interact with brands across an increasing number of channels, their data is becoming similarly fractured.
A single customer might engage with a brand across social media, email, blog content, SMS, and in person. As a result, their data is fragmented across POS systems, customer relationship management (CRM) tools, and more. The customer is interested in the brand but leaves after experiencing irrelevant, generic messaging and a lackluster customer experience.
The customer data platform (CDP) offers a solution. It helps businesses collect, organize, and segment customer data across all channels.
In this article, we will review popular customer data platform use cases. We’ll examine how brands can use CDPs to increase performance of their marketing campaigns, personalization strategies, and bottom lines.
Businesses can’t exist without customers – and the best ones can’t exist without customer data.
What is a customer data platform (CDP)?
A customer data platform is MarTech software that collects customer data across disparate sources and generates a 360-degree view of each customer’s journey. A CDP collects data in real time across all touchpoints (online and in-person), synthesizing the information to create unified customer profiles. Brands can use a CDP to improve customer data integrity, enhance marketing strategies, and provide a better customer experience across all channels and touchpoints.
Want more info on the customer data platform?
This ultimate guide to the CDP reviews what it does, how it works, its benefits, and more.
9 Customer Data Platform Use Cases
A CDP enables a business to optimize its marketing strategy, customer experience, and operations through omnichannel customer data collection, analysis, and segmentation.
Examples of customer data platform use cases include
- Identity resolution and unified customer profiles
- Comprehensive customer journey mapping
- Enhanced customer segmentation and analysis
- Personalized omnichannel customer experience
- Identification of high-value customer segments
- Elimination of data silos with MarTech integration
- Stronger data governance and compliance
- Automations to deploy personalization at scale
- Streamlined organizational operations
Identity resolution and unified customer profiles
A customer data platform collects real-time, omnichannel data and develops unified customer profiles for each consumer. This feature is especially helpful to brands with multiple sources of customer data: CRMs, websites, stores, loyalty programs, and more.
The CRM matches profiles across digital and in-person touchpoints, eliminating duplicate profiles for more accurate customer data. A CDP can even match incomplete data to its appropriate customer based on other identifiers.
This ability to develop unified customer profiles through omnichannel data leads to better customer data integrity. Brands avoid duplicate profiles, incomplete data sets, or data silos. Instead, they have an accurate, comprehensive view of each customer in real time.
Comprehensive customer journey mapping
A CDP’s identity resolution capability also results in a 360-degree customer profile. Brands with a CDP can see a customer’s behaviors and preferences at every stage in the customer journey. Normally, this information is fractured between digital or in-person interactions, first party vs. third party data, etc.
A customer data platform enables customer journey mapping at every touchpoint. In mapping the entire customer journey, businesses understand which touchpoints, what channels, and what messaging will yield the best results. Brands can provide targeted marketing and a more personalized customer experience.
Enhanced customer segmentation and analysis
Customer data platforms allow for audience segmentation at every level – even at the individual level. A brand can segment its audience based on specific criteria to develop more targeted campaigns. Or, it can segment to tailor messaging, to identify which segments perform best (and why), and to provide customer experiences developed to meet the needs of each population.
Customer data segmentation leads to more effective, data-driven marketing. With CDPs, brands can make the most out of their resources, deploying assets where they will see the most impact and the greatest potential return on investment (ROI).
Personalized omnichannel customer experience
Centralized customer data, audience segmentation, and 360-degree customer views allow businesses to personalize the customer experience across every channel. For example, a brand can use offline data to enhance the online experience: if a customer buys a product in the store, a brand can send the customer an email or SMS with product recommendations based on that purchase.
By customizing the experience, brands develop more effective messaging based on the unique needs, behaviors, and criteria of specific audiences. Personalization can lead to brand loyalty, improved sales and potential for future sales, reduced customer churn, and other important benefits.
Check out our guide to personalization in marketing. We review its uses, benefits, and 18 examples of effective email personalization.
Identification of high-value customer segments
One of the powerful customer data platform use cases is using actionable analytics to identify high-value audiences. A CDP can identify specific segments within an audience, including which customers are the most valuable and which are the least likely to convert.
By identifying the most valuable audience segments, brands can develop targeting strategies based on important factors:
Where are they most likely to buy?
Do they shop online, through social media, or in-store? Brands can develop messaging that meets customers where they’re most likely to convert.
What do they purchase?
Brands can provide recommendations based on past purchases to improve potential for upselling or repeat sales.
Where are they most likely to engage with a brand?
It’s not all about sales – engagement matters, too. This offers brands a chance to connect with their customers to maintain a positive relationship and continued brand loyalty.
What are their characteristics?
Are any characteristics from the most-valuable segment also found in other audience segments? Brands that use these common traits to identify other segments that have a higher potential to convert. Using similar messaging and strategies between the two groups might also help turn those lower-converting customers into high-value customers.
A customer data profile helps businesses analyze data for more effective resource management. By understanding which segments are most likely to convert – and which are least likely to see any ROI – brands can better understand where to invest.
Elimination of data silos with MarTech integration
The customer data platform is designed to integrate with an organization’s existing marketing technology (MarTech) stack. By using native connectors, APIs, data exports, and more, a CDP can enhance data collection and management without impacting the original MarTech ecosystem. It collects data across that entire ecosystem in real time, organizing it into a comprehensive database of unique customer profiles. The CDP also reconciles customer data to remove redundancies and connect disparate data sets – providing better data integrity and more comprehensive customer journey mapping.
Don’t miss the 10 reasons why businesses need a customer data platform (CDP).
Stronger data governance and compliance
With a CDP’s centralized database, data management is more agile and responsive. Organizations can easily monitor compliance from a single database. They can also implement changes more quickly and effectively to remain compliant. Most customer data platform vendors even have consent and data privacy features built into their platforms to adhere with major national and international laws.
Automations to deploy personalization at scale
Another important customer data platform use case, automation allows brands to create and deploy more personalized marketing with less effort. Businesses can develop targeted campaigns across email, SMS, web, and more – ensuring they reach customers with exactly the right messaging at exactly the right time. Customer support teams can monitor customer behavior and develop strategies to provide a more personalized, white-glove experience for consumers. Teams can use statistical models to not only respond to customer needs but to anticipate them. Before a customer even realizes they have a need, the brand has already fulfilled it.
Automations help brands scale their efforts, generating more results from fewer resources.
Streamlined organizational operations
Customer data platforms manage data in real time and create an organization-wide database that is easily shared through various teams. Web developers, marketers, and customer support teams can access the same data at all times – and can run their own analytics or segmentation without compromising the original data set. Teams can collaborate on cohesive branding, messaging, and user experience across the customer journey. They can develop personalization across various channels, ensuring an on-brand experience on every channel.
Additionally, a customer data platform is easy for non-technical personnel to use. Marketers and other non-tech teams can use the platform on their own, streamlining operations and reducing the dependency on developers or IT experts.
By reducing data silos and providing a single, unified set of customer data, the CDP allows brands to create a more streamlined operation and a more cohesive customer experience.
Customer data use cases that inform strategies and improve performance
Customer data management is central to the long term success of most businesses. It can enhance marketing efforts through segmentation. It can determine pain points in the customer journey. It can even identify which customers are most valuable to a brand – and which characteristics they all share.
Through a customer data platform, a brand can do all of the above – and more.
