You may have heard that we joined the CDP Institute as a Gold Sponsor. Why? In recent years we’ve noticed that more and more brands have come to us because they have a hard time consolidating, managing and leveraging the vast amounts of first and third-party data they have at their disposal. Our customer data platform (CDP) directly addresses that pain point by unifying data across silos and making it immediately actionable, and we wanted to join the broader ecosystem of companies that are working to tackle the same challenges. So, do you need a customer data platform?
Like any technology, customer data platforms aren’t necessarily for everyone, though. With that in mind, we made this quick set of criteria to help you understand if a CDP fits your needs.
Your customer data is spread out across silos
Achieving a single view of the customer is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, priority for many marketers today - especially those who are just starting to move away from legacy systems. Doing so, however, requires breaking down the data silos that exist in many organizations.
Traditionally, various elements of the marketing team use their own tools and maintain their own databases. The digital team, direct mail, ecommerce, website, and others may all be working off of their own sources of data and losing customers as they move across various channels. This makes delivering a consistent, personalized experience virtually impossible even with the most sophisticated marketing automation tools.
Beyond marketing, other elements of the business - like customer service - often capture valuable customer data and feedback that would be valuable in a marketing context, but is rarely leveraged due to silos. Unifying as much customer data as possible, from as many sources of possible, is how CDPs help form a single customer view.
You can’t take full advantage your data for marketing purposes
Even in organizations where the marketing teams are more aligned, it’s incredibly common for another department - typically IT - to own and manage master customer databases. If a marketer, for example, wants a list of every customer living in a certain geographic area, that might require an IT ticket that takes days to fulfill, or specialized skills like SQL to manually pull the data themselves.
This type of delay makes executing basic marketing campaigns extremely difficult, and achieving real-time personalization and optimization virtually impossible.
With a customer data platform, data is readily accessible for analysis and segmentation. Marketers can manually pull segments rapidly, or apply machine learning to derive additional insight. This allows for far more granular and effective campaigns than would be possible when control over the data lies outside the marketing team.
Your current solution is way too cumbersome
Many organizations have assembled systems that function similarly to CDPs. The problem is that in many cases this requires cobbling together solutions from different vendors that are extremely difficult and time-consuming to maintain, and can cause serious downtime when they break. This cuts into the ROI that the organization might otherwise derive from being able to execute more effective marketing campaigns.
CDPs can streamline complex marketing stacks by providing a single source of data that links into the marketing tools that interact with consumers across various channels. Rather than building cumbersome custom integrations with each different tool, marketers can quickly integrate their tech stacks into a CDP.
Bonus sign! Compliance
An exciting and emerging CDP use case is developing around the rollout of GDPR and other customer data regulations. These require, among other things, that organizations maintain holistic records of customer information that are fully accessible to customers. This is another great reason to invest in a system that not only consolidates data but makes it actionable across any channel.
If any of the above signs sound like your organization, we’d love to show you how QuickPivot can meet your CDP needs. Feel free to reach out for a demo of our unique platform!
