Customer Data Platform: Everything you need to know as a marketer

Technology as the foundation

The current generation has a much shorter attention span. The consumer decides within microseconds whether something is relevant or not. Generation X grew up with digitisation, fast internet and mobile phones. They are relying on technology that can meet their needs. Think about all the technical gadgets they can buy. Even more so, information, services and also marketing advertisements must be of a higher standard. For a business, this is the only way to be relevant to the consumer in the year 2019.

Personal and relevant is not enough

In order to get noticed by your customers, you have to stand out, grab and hold the attention. This is only possible if you offer them something that really appeals to them. Personal and relevant advertising may sound like a culprit, but it's all about the extent to which you do this.

Making marketing and advertising personal can be done in different ways;

• Basic Personalisation

You can address your recipients by their first name when sending them an e-mail, SMS, or WhatsApp. This is basic personalisation.

• Secondary Personalisation

If you take the next step in personalisation, you approach the consumer with an offer that is relevant to him or her. Think about an advertisement for a certain brand of shoes which the customer has already bought from before. You are not looking at only personal data, but also at their behavioural data such as (purchase) activities.

• Hyper Personalisation

Hyper personalisation goes even further. By looking at the personal data, past activities and current behaviours, you can respond to latent needs. By means of analysis and predictive models, perhaps automated by machine learning, you can assess which offer or promotion suits each customer best. You can surprise your customers with marketing offers they didn't even think of themselves, but which still suits them.

All data, structured in one place

Every marketer wants to be able to apply the highest level of personalisation, but how do you work towards that? In order to apply personalisation beyond the basics, you need a good foundation first. Because even though we already talked about machine learning, personalisation doesn't happen by itself! Data is at the heart of all digital marketing.

The problem many marketers face is that customer data is scattered across different data sources. Think for example of your newsletter lists, purchasing systems, social media and other channels. All these sources contain highly relevant data about your customers. But only when you bring them together and obtain real-time insights, can you actually get started. With traditional solutions, it takes a lot of IT time to bring data together from different sources, it costs a lot of money and are often over-complicated because they are not specifically intended for marketing.

Marketers can do it themselves with a Customer Data Platform

A Customer Data Platform (CDP) can offer a solution. A CDP enables hyper personalisation by bringing together different data sources. By unifying these into one profile per customer, you gain insight across your data sources. A CDP ensures that you, as a marketer, will be able to get the most out of all your data. The great thing about it is that CDPs have been developed for marketers and are therefore focused on marketing.

A good example of this is the dashboard, a good starting point for gaining insight into all your data. The dashboard shows at a glance:

• Personal data
• Real-time activities
• The underlying behaviour

This is very important for you as a marketer because it gives you an idea of who your customers are. You will probably also see what target groups you have. A target group contains similarities in the profile and/or behaviour that you as a marketer can respond to. By segmenting these target groups and responding to their behaviour, you make full use of all the possibilities of the CDP. Moreover, CDPs such as CM.com's have a marketing automation element. This allows you to set up automatic marketing flows with all omni-channel communication channels.

Data-driven marketing

Do you, as an organisation, want to make a difference? Then you have to approach your customers in a relevant and personal way at the highest possible level. You do this by having your data - from all relevant data sources - in order in one central place. A Customer Data Platform gives you an overview and insight into your customers. As a marketer, you are in control so you can easily use the customer data to develop relevant, creative campaigns through segments and workflows. You can automate and monitor these campaigns so you can focus more on the customer and creativity in campaigns.