Considerations with building your single customer view and customer metrics
Many customer data platforms (CDPs) on the market, each with its strengths and weaknesses. How do you choose the best one for your organization? One important factor to consider is how well the CDP integrates with your company’s other marketing technologies. This blog post will discuss the value of integrations to your CDP, like personalization, and some things to keep in mind when making your decision.
A customer data platform (CDP) is a powerful tool that can give you a 360-degree view of your customer. However, a CDP is only as good as the data it contains. Invespcro surveyed businesses and found that only 54% cite data quality and completeness as their largest marketing data management challenge. Data cleaning and cleansing can derail a CDP project by adding months of work to fix the data. Some CDPs allow you to configure which fields are right and meaning one your connect. For your CDP to be effective, it needs to be able to collect customer data from all of your marketing channels and touchpoints. When you have multiple channels and touchpoints, then integrations come in, also referred to as connectors.
According to Deloitte Digital, the average business already has 17 unique technology applications housing customer data.
There are two main types of integrations: first-party and third-party. Your CDP will integrate with your first-party data, that is, the data created by the business or provided by the customer directly. First-party integrations are core to getting any customer analytic result and, therefore, typically included in the base price of the CDP. Third-party integrations come from other companies and must be purchased separately and are usually purchased separately. You turn to third-party data when you want more fields to profile against, learn, and build metrics. Second-party data are rare, but you may get data fields from a joint campaign you run with an affiliate.
Integration to get a Single View of a Customer from Unknown to Known
Marketing clouds are an excellent way to help companies with known customers stay on top of their game. For example, suppose you have invested heavily in CRM systems, email marketing platforms, and other similar tools as a foundation for customer experience (CX). In that case, you need capabilities so that a single view can provide insights into potential new leads or opportunities while also increasing conversion rates among existing ones. With help from a CDP, the solution pulls together data from all the sources, including social media channels such as Facebook ads targeting specific demographics. The marketing stack delivers the CX that the person needs to purchase.
Almost every CDP vendor claims to provide a comprehensive customer data foundation. The proof is in how easy it is to make the integration and how they can put the data together to work. Not integrating your unknown to know visitors will leave out critical insights into behavior before purchase. It would help if you had vendor-neutral CDPs that utilize tag management technology and collect information through a set of connectors. You don’t need to rely on robust but rigid customer identity data. Instead, you can much more easily collect and unify data relating to both new and unknown customers, thus forming a fuller and more useful view of the customer.
Integrations allow your CDP to collect customer data from other marketing technologies (CRMs, email platforms, web analytics tools, POS, etc.) and bring it all into one central location. This gives you a complete picture of your customer journey and helps you better understand what’s working and what isn’t.
If you’re considering a customer data platform (CDP), it’s important to look at both the first-party and available third-party integrations.
When considering a CDP, it’s important to look at both the first-party and available third-party integrations. You’ll want to make sure that the CDP integrates with all of the current marketing technologies and any you might use in the future.
It’s also important to consider how easy it is to set up and manage these integrations. Some CDPs can be very difficult to integrate with other systems, so you’ll want to ensure that the platform you choose is easy to use and has good customer support.
Like every business decision, the value and impact of adding integrations should be considered when choosing a CDP for your organization. A CDP with robust first- and third-party integrations will give you the most comprehensive view of your customer, making it easier to create targeted marketing campaigns that deliver results.
Realistic needs for real-time integration
Stores need to consider the timing requirements when it comes to real-time integrations. So many people ask for instant results, but you should consider how often you need those instant results. Instantaneous data is possible with webhooks. How often does the data change? Because marketing cloud CDPs rely on tools they’ve acquired instead of built, there is typically a slight lag in the communication between these different products.
The marketing cloud CDPs are nimble and can connect well with other cloud Saas solutions- the modern realm of marketing solutions. Think of Salesforce, Klaviyo, Shopify, Hubspot, Mailchimp. Still, an organization has its hardware, and integrating these systems is harder. Because you are moving from on-premise to the cloud introduces latency. But this latency may not be a problem if you look at the numbers weekly.
When accessing impact, you need to also take into account the resources you need. Complex integrations can take a team of developers and QA folks a few weeks to execute.
Where interoperability is going in the future
Although still in infancy within a generation, the marketing landscape will be changing rapidly and wildly as we move into web 3.0, the metaverse, and the whole new dawn of the digital age. Consider how a customer data platform will integrate your current marketing technologies and any future technologies you might use. Doing so will ensure that you have a complete picture of your customer and can make targeted marketing decisions that deliver results.
So far, from my observation, web 3.0 users tend to use many aliases. They prefer to describe their persona instead of providing a real name. I imagine we will need ids for all of the aliases. Identity mapping will be hard, if not impossible. Using third-party data on aliases also seems wasteful, given the inaccuracy of matching.
What about tools you’re not already using but may need in the future? What if there were a way for your company’s marketing cloud to grow with these new features and capabilities. Marketing Cloud CDPs typically acquire their functionality instead of building it themselves— leveraging other organizations’ deep pockets and an innovative teaming arrangement between clients who want access across multiple clouds while offering unique solutions through single vendor partnerships. But wait! Your customer base will only see what they’ve purchased from one provider – meaning that any insights or analytics pertaining specifically to them would be lost without comprehensive coverage over every aspect possible when working together seamlessly.
Flexibility is key to ensuring that your data needs are met. Engaging with a vendor-neutral CDP partner who has the expertise and resources necessary will allow you peace of mind as they work towards meeting those goals head-on, no matter how big or small they may be!
Some customer data platforms on the market do not allow easy integration with other marketing technologies because they focus on specific solutions. But when you need a development team to connect to a new data source, each time-limiting the effectiveness of the CDP. Consider the value of integrations when choosing a customer data platform for your organization. A CDP with strong first- and third-party integrations will give you the most comprehensive view of your customer, making it easier to create targeted marketing campaigns that deliver results.
