Some basics and why an eCommerce business needs a customer data platform
Businesses these days are collecting more customer data than ever before. However, managing and using this data effectively can be a challenge. That’s where Customer Data Platforms (CDP) come in. CDPs are software that helps businesses consolidate all of their customer data into one place to be easily accessed and used. In this blog post, we will discuss what CDPs are, what business challenges they solve, and how businesses can implement them.
What is a Customer Data Platform
A customer data platform (CDPƒbook) is software that marketers can use to collect and integrate their customers’ information from different marketing applications like Instagram, Klaviyo, and GoogleAds. The result will be an organized profile for each individual in a special customer database, with data going back out into other applications used in the business and aligning customer information amongst teams.
Customer Data Privacy
A customer data platform stores the information on the customer that conforms to the privacy laws such as GDPR and CCPA intended to give customers more control over the customer data collected by businesses. Large brands are taking notice, too, with fines that can get up into the hundreds of millions. So far, however, it looks like policies come slow, and the compliance agents are going after the big fish.
Succinctly, a CDP is a marketer-managed system designed to collect customer data from multiple sources, normalize it, and build unified customer profiles. The result is a persistent, unified customer database that shares data back to other marketing applications.
Business Challenge:
Processing to evaluate Retail Sales and Online Sales together remain very manual.
As a business operator, you need to understand your total sales each month and which customer cohorts sold well. You want to understand your customers and provide them with the best possible experience. But putting together this information can be highly manual and tedious. Customer data is often spread across different departments and silos within a company. The process becomes accident-prone, making it difficult to get a complete picture of the customer and leading to missed opportunities.
A CDP can help solve this problem by consolidating customer data into one place, whether you use Booker for your stores or Shopify for e-commerce. Automating the data flow into a single database means reporting technology can more easily pull the information. By fixing the error-prone processes, businesses can have a single view of the customer and use this information to create better customer experiences. In addition, CDPs help businesses automate processes, such as marketing campaigns and customer segmentation, to give you this rich information on-demand and in real-time. The right information at your marketer’s fingertips can lead to more efficient marketing efforts and personalized customer experiences.
Business Challenge:
Businesses need to build trust by consistently communicating to different customer segments across the channels.
We’ve learned the value of segmentation within new email marketing software like Klaviyo and MailChimp, where you can set up workflows based on time or customer action. Time and self-selection work great but can be limiting if it’s the only way you are segmenting your customers. There are many more ways to segment your customers and discover your most valuable segments based on the customer journey and product usage scores.
Personalization drives marketers to engage the customer with valuable information and reminders. A study by Zendesk found that 89 percent of consumers have used multiple channels to communicate with a brand. This statistic means that you can find support and product details when you need it, how they need it, and where. Engaging customers in each channel with the right information will get them to trust your brand and let you differentiate your offering from competitors.
Business Challenge:
Deliver online-offline experiences to differentiate by tailoring your customer journeys
As the tenant of customer engagement goes, if you can increase the touchpoints with your customer, you can keep your brand at the top of your mind longer, leading to more purchases and opportunities for referrals. If you’re thinking of implementing a CDP at your business, keep a few things in mind. First, you’ll need to decide which business challenges you want to solve with a CDP. Then, you’ll need to put together a plan for how you will use the CDP to achieve your goals.
You can use customer journey mapping to ensure the handoff between channels works seamlessly. Customer journey mapping will also help you with the type of communication your need with your customer based on the channel. For example, you don’t want to be too wordy if you send a text notification.
Your customer journey map becomes the requirement for your CDP to be configured and run.
In summary
Businesses use CDP software to have a single view of the customer and use this information to create better customer experiences regardless of the channels the customer uses. In addition, CDPs can help businesses automate processes, such as marketing campaigns and customer segmentation. Such automation can lead to more efficient marketing efforts and personalized customer experiences.
CDPs solve the problem of having more than one source of customer data and meet the business challenges around.
Automating sales reporting and analytics when transactions are in multiple places like in Retail Store POS and Online on an e-commerce platform
Building trust with omnichannel content that connects and converts
Tailoring customer experiences and journeys that immerse with different technologies.
Having a CDP can help businesses overcome the challenge of managing customer data from multiple sources. Not only does this give businesses a single view of the customer, but it also allows businesses to automate marketing processes and create more personalized customer experiences. If you’re interested in learning more about how CDPs can benefit your business, reach out today for a consultation. We would be happy to discuss how we could help you start finding an eCommerce CDP that meets your unique needs.
