Customer Data Platform: the intelligent tool for knowing your customers by heart
Do you dream of offering your customers a personalised, seamless and relevant experience of your brand?
Then you're going to need data, lots of it. But you still need to be able to use it quickly and intelligently to launch day-to-day sales, marketing and relationship-building initiatives.
The best tool for getting your customer data talking? Without a doubt, the customer data platform. In this article, we take a look at what it is, how it differs from a data management platform, and how to choose the right platform. Follow the guide!
What is a customer data platform (CDP)?
Definition of a CDP
According to Gartner, a customer data platform is "a marketing technology that unifies customer data from marketing and all other channels to build customer profiles and optimise the timing and targeting of messages and offers".
CDP collects and centralises customer data from a wide range of sources, but its strength lies above all in its ability to
- process it
- clean it,
- combine it
- and put it into context to give it meaning.
The result is ultra-precise 360° customer profiles, which can be accessed by the company's other systems (a CRM, for example). In this way :
- the marketing department can launch relevant, targeted campaigns,
- the customer service department can better anticipate and respond to customer needs,
- and the sales department to be more effective in its pitch and offers to increase its chances of signing contracts.
💡 The information gathered is therefore useful to all these departments, which will optimise their actions and continue to collect increasingly relevant data that will also be of use to the other departments. A sort of virtuous circle!
The 5 types of data collected by CDP
A customer data platform can collect different types of data to populate its database:
- Behavioural data collected when users navigate a site or software (average time spent on a page, functionalities used, average click rate, pages viewed, etc.), which can be used to monitor the performance of marketing actions.
- Profile data collected by the CRM, for example, which relates to the identity of the individual (first name, age, SPC, profession, areas of interest, languages spoken, preferences, etc.), which are essential for personalising the customer relationship.
- Transactional data from your e-commerce platform (average basket, number of orders, customer reviews, preferred method of payment, etc.), which allows you to better understand a person's purchasing behaviour.
- Offline data, which can come from the field (shop, meeting at a trade show), from sales staff during telephone appointments, from calls to customer service, etc.
- Product data such as stock levels, available colours and sizes, prices, etc.
available, prices, etc. This is essential information to avoid making the wrong move by recommending a product that is not automatically in stock, for example.
💡 This list is obviously not exhaustive; depending on your industry and your needs, it will probably be necessary to connect other data sources to it.
The advantages of using a CDP
- ✅ Launch more relevant marketing actions, using all the information available. For example, you can send an email on the day and at the time when it is most likely to be read, or tailor content to centres of interest. It's all about boosting the effectiveness of your campaigns!
- ✅ Make better strategic decisions using the data available in the CDP, which is reliable, cleansed and put into context to shed new light. In a way, this aligns the strategic with the operational.
- ✅ Provide a personalised, seamless experience for customers which boosts conversions and encourages customer loyalty.
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✅ Improve customer service responsiveness thanks to a detailed knowledge of each customer. There's no longer any need to ask the same questions every time a customer interacts with you. Customer services can anticipate the needs of the person they're dealing with and respond more effectively. For customers, it's a much smoother and more pleasant experience!
What is the difference with a data management platform (DMP)?
The purpose of a data management platform is to collect and store data for use in advertising.
Thanks in particular to cookies, which collect anonymised data, it has access to information linked to browsing to segment visitors into different groups called audiences, in order to deliver advertising tailored to the group.
| Customer data platform | Data management platform |
| Profiles linked to an identity | Anonymous profiles |
| Proprietary and third-party data | Ephemeral third-party data (90 days) |
| Multiple use | Advertising use only |
| Online and offline data | Online data only |
| Unified data | Volatile data |
How do you (properly) choose your customer data platform?
Before choosing a tool, it's important to know what your needs and objectives are in acquiring such a platform. This will help you decide whether the tool you are considering is right for you.
👉 For example, Salesforce's customer data platform is renowned for its power, but can be complex to implement or use for some businesses.
🛠 Here's a great alternative: Scal-e. This data management platform gathers raw information from all your strategic sources and unifies it to create meaningful customer profiles. It then exploits them and puts them into context in real time to help you intelligently segment your audience and anticipate behaviour. Then deploy your personalised, relevant marketing campaigns directly from the solution. Finally, monitor and improve your performance with powerful analysis and reporting tools.
🛠 Let's also mention Twilio Segment, the Customer Data Platform solution that unifies your customer data. Twilio collects your visitors' data to facilitate communication with your customers, increase their satisfaction and optimise your marketing campaigns. You can optimise your customer relations across the various existing channels with all your company's employees on a single platform (calls, text messages, chat, emails and social networks). The interface is fully customisable to give you a clear overview and make decision-making easier. You can create profiles based on your customer data that can be accessed by your company's employees directly from the software, for greater productivity.
CDP in a nutshell
- A customer data platform is a tool that allows you to create 360° customer profiles based on the intelligent use of data gathered from different online and offline sources.
- It is different from a data management platform, which only collects data from third-party cookies, which are anonymous, volatile and ephemeral, and are only used for advertising targeting.
- CDP is useful to a company's various departments for improving the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, sales pitches and the quality of customer service.
So, are you convinced by the benefits of CDP for your company?
Article translated from French