Customer Data Platform Vs. Omni-Channel Marketing Platform

As a layman who spends hours on their mobile devices, especially during this challenging time of COVID-19, we witness a lot of ads on every app and platform. Be it an in-app advertisement or a random pop-up, I’m sure there have been so many instances where you’ve been left shocked by ads that advertise products you just searched about.

Let’s take an everyday example to learn how this happens. Imagine that you are browsing Nike’s website one sleepless night, randomly looking at shoes and wishlist one particular pair that you really liked. The next day, you’re on Myntra, searching for a new pair of lifestyle Nike shoes that you want to buy and comparing its prices with the previous shoe you liked. There is a good chance that the next irritating Youtube ad you see in between your music is about Nike and mainly about the shoes you were searching for. 

You must’ve noticed that such interactions online with a specific company, websites you visited, or even products that you’ve viewed resulted in more personalized advertisements. All ads that you subsequently saw during the day might’ve felt as if they were personally created and curated for you. Even the in-game ads on your phone talk about the shoe you searched for a couple of days ago.

The reason behind and credit for such relatable and personalized ads go to a software known as Customer Data Platforms.

What is a Customer Data Platform?

A Customer Data Platform or CDP is basically a type of software that gathers and combines data from various different kinds of sources to create a unique, centralized customer database that contains customers’ data. Such data is collected through multiple key points and interactions that users of the web have with the product or service that your company offers.

A good CDP software can divide the vast database and segment into various categories and groups that count in multiple factors. This helps companies, and more specifically marketers, to create more personalized marketing campaigns. 

CDP and CDP marketing helps them better understand their audience and customers, allowing the company to create ads based on the preferences of everyone who has visited a specific page or has interactions with web pages that display their product.

Few reputable and renowned Customer Data Platform companies are SAP, Segment, and Tealium. Here are a few advantages of using a CDP software:

Insightful customer analytics

A CDP software allows the marketer to analyze existing and potential customers. It breaks down a customer’s behavior throughout their browsing journey to help the business make informed and well-researched business decisions when it comes to marketing, product development, offers, advertisements, etc.

Focused customer experiences 

A CDP architecture provides dedicated customer view profiles based on data gathered from numerous sources. It showcases a customer’s behavioral patterns, which helps predict their potential future decisions and monitor where their engagement is coming from. It also helps understand why that particular customer wasn’t interacting with the old campaigns, assisting businesses to target such customers via the right channel and with the right marketing mix that appeals the most to them.

Efficient workflow

CDP software streamlines information and data collected from various sources into a single location/silo and applies it to different company technology and tools. Such data is then segmented and further used in multiple areas in analytics and marketing.

Customer Data Platforms use the following categories of data: 

– Personal identity data such as name, age, demographic information, location 

– Descriptive data such as family information, lifestyle, and job/career information

– Quantitative data such as transactional information, number of times you browsed online for a specific thing, online activity on websites, trends, etc.

Omni-Channel Marketing Platforms

In simple words, Omni-channel platforms follow a multichannel approach to marketing and sales where their efforts aren’t restricted only to online means. Whether a customer is shopping online from a website or an e-commerce platform using his phone, placing an order on call, or even shopping physically from a store, they are helping a marketer. An Omni-Channel platform integrates distribution, communication, and promotion on the back end for a more direct, convenient user experience.

For the customer, it combines the shopping’s physical aspect with its digital element. Through Omni-Channels, for example, a company’s customer can reach and contact the company not only through their designated email but can fill the contact form on the website, call them, drop a direct message, etc.

Difference and relation between Omni- Channel platforms and CDP

Consumers today have become used to the digitalization of marketing and advertisements. Personalized interactions with brands have made their lives easier since not only is everything available at their fingertips, they now don’t even have to search meticulously for what they want. Omni-Channel marketing through various platforms has, in layman terms, made the product come to them.

There exists a considerable difference and co-dependence between the Customer Data Platform architecture and the Omni-Channel platforms. Where on the one hand, CDPs personalize ads as per the customer’s behavior, Omni-Channel platforms help deliver those ads to customers on various mediums.

In order to run a proper Omni-Channel marketing campaign that connects with every customer on emails, calls, and other mediums,  marketers need a good understanding and view of each customer. Here is where the CDP platforms come in.

Marketing Data Integration CDPs like Segment enables the users to leverage their data while still maintaining data governance. These are great tools because they continually expand upon their reach with the new connector. CDPs help marketers better understand their audience and customers, eventually helping them create personalized marketing campaigns. The company could easily create ads based on everyone who has visited a specific page on their website and personalize it.

CDPs can be claimed to be the heart of Omni-Channel marketing

CDPs and Omni-Channel platforms are the secrets that combine marketing analytics with reach to create a distinguished and successful campaign.

How?

Omni-Channel marketing gets automated through CDPs.

Since CDPs collect and centralize data from multiple sources, they can easily track each customer’s journey through various channels. A good CDP pools and stores data based on customers’ interactions with a business’ website and their browsing patterns that creates a personalized, Omni-Channel marketing strategy over various mediums.

While most automated marketing tools only incorporate mailers, a CDP that is integrated with Omni-Channel marketing platforms can communicate automatically through text messages, pre-recorded voice calls, social media, etc. 

A CDP helps marketers reach wider audiences 

Firstly, CDPs gather data from numerous sources and subsequently organize and share such data seamlessly across different systems. This allows marketers to take control of silos full of segmented and segregated focused customer data and analysis reports, allowing them to efficiently use it to lead automated, Omni-Channel marketing campaigns that help businesses grow.

Retain previous and returning customers

Since CDPs have the ability to track, collect, manage, store and analyze data on customer buying behaviors and their transactional patterns, marketers can identify high-value returning customers quickly.

Authentic personalization for campaigns

The key for a business to win, satisfy and retain customers in the digital age is personalization. This is why a CDP integrated Omni-Channel platform is necessary since it allows you to gather data on your customers’ favorite medium through which they interact with the business’s website and target them accordingly.

Well-targeted campaigns – DMP and CRM

CDPs deliver personalized customer experiences once integrated with Omni-Channel marketing campaigns. However, it’s hard to drive a marketing campaign without first and third-party data. Here comes the sister platforms – DMPs and CRMs.

DMPs or Data management platforms collect and manage large data sets of audiences and visitors. DMPs get their data by either purchasing it from data sellers like Datalogix or by having a large number of users on a platform (like Facebook) through which DMP can aggregate and anonymize its data.

CRMs or Customer Relationship Manager platforms manage a company’s relationships and interactions with existing, returning, and potential customers. It helps improve business relationships with customers and stay connected with them while streamlining processes and improving profitability. 

CDPs, CRMs, and DMPs are all examples of essential marketing analytics tools. Combining all three with Omni-Channel platforms puts the marketers in a prime position to create a successful marketing campaign.

Achieving proper integration of Omni-Channel marketing with CDPs

Omni-Channel personalization at scale is essential to the success of a good marketing campaign, and segmenting the data for every single customer is the key to it. Aggregating data in silos is redundant, and it only secludes customers in numbers. It is not about quantifying the customers that you have but rather to singularly understand their needs and habits. In order to achieve personalization at scale, it is essential for you to customize the data with respect to all customers by breaking it down into a special package for every person who uses, has used, or might use your services.

We are talking about thousands of viewers and customers, and it’s impossible to do all of it manually. It would take thousands of hours of effort and cost a fortune for the company in terms of person-hours, employee turnover, IT. Basically it would prove to be a bane rather than a boon. That is why businesses have started using Customer Data Platforms, or CDPs.

As we have learned, CDPs create a readymade customer database and then segment it into various categories so that you may analyze each of your customers as an asset. Such integration improves the technological processes and allows businesses to form relationships with users and thereby leads to organic growth.

Wrapping Up

In conclusion, a modern business must harness the power that CDP and its sister platforms provide in order to grow their businesses. Integrating it with omnichannel platforms can further boost their marketing efforts and allow them to target campaigns and ads as per their customers. Marketing analytics through CDPs can help determine the average cost of acquiring new customers and ensure it is low enough to keep an existing customer. It helps in managing resources effectively and efficiently, all while personalizing everything. 

Like Simon Kemp says, “Personalization is about giving people more of what they want, but also giving them less of what they don’t want.” 

CDPs and Omni-Channel marketing platforms go hand-in-hand and are the secret to great marketing success.