How to choose a customer data platform
There are so many ways to learn about your customer. You can study in-app behavior, assess the sentiment of their social media comments, pay attention to the promotions they respond to, listen to their customer support calls, and more.
But combining this data can be difficult for business intelligence and IT teams. And without this precious, multi-layered data, it’s nearly impossible for marketing teams to personalize their campaigns to the level audiences expect.
Fortunately, customer data platforms can help. A customer data platform (CDP) is a central repository for audience insights that empowers organizations to create more personalized and engaging customer experiences.
Selecting a CDP can be daunting. With so many options available, it’s difficult to determine which platform will suit your needs best.
In this guide:
- Seven things to look for in your CDP — and one to avoid
- How to choose a customer data platform (CDP)
- Transform your customer experience with a real-time CDP
Seven things to look for in your CDP — and one to avoid
1. Real-time data streaming and data ingestion
The future of marketing is real time, and that’s where modern CDPs excel. Make sure your CDP streams and ingests data in real time so you always see your customers in the present moment — and not how they were a week or more ago.
2. Purpose-built as a CDP by a trusted organization
Many CDPs in the marketplace are cobbled together from disparate technologies, and some are created by young and unproven organizations. Because your CDP handles one of your company’s most important assets — your customer data — it is a good idea to choose a solution from a reliable source that built the CDP from the ground up.
3. Complete, unified user profiles
One of the principal benefits of a CDP is personalization on an individual basis. Your CDP should give marketers an access point to the known (personal identifying information or PII) and unknown (pseudonymous) data for every single customer. This allows for intelligent segmentation, personal preferences, and adherence to privacy and regulation standards.
4. Robust, native data governance tools
Your CDP should make your data governance simpler, not more complex. Look for a CDP that has pre-built and custom data tagging capabilities. Make sure to ask the vendor when your customer data gets tagged with regulatory considerations — ideally, it is at the point of ingestion, not after customer data has already entered your CDP.
5. Real-time data activation
Your CDP should function in real time both at the ingestion and activation phases. Both pieces are critical. Real-time data ingestion ensures your customer profiles are always up to date — but without real-time data activation, you cannot deliver experiences based on incoming changes to your customer profile.
6. Easy for marketers to use
CDPs democratize data, giving marketers the information they need to succeed. An ideal CDP will be built for marketers, with an interface, tools, and workflows structured to fit seamlessly into a marketing context. After implementation, using your CDP should not require any help from your IT department.
7. Scalable, flexible, and extensible
Your CDP should integrate seamlessly with your existing marketing and advertising technology stack — again, without putting extra strain on IT. The right CDP for your organization will be able to handle the complexity of your business and scale with you. You do not want a CDP that you can outgrow.
The one thing that you should avoid on your search for the right CDP:
“Point” CDPs:
- So called because they are point solutions, point CDPs cannot handle nuance and complexity as well as a modern, full-service CDP will. Point CDPs serve just one main purpose — storing known and unknown data — without the robust capabilities of modern CDPs. This means that your IT team will need to implement supplemental solutions, which wastes time and adds unnecessary bulk to your tech stack.
- Because many vendors are calling their point CDPs by the name “CDP,” it can be hard to tell the difference at first. Use the list of seven CDP qualities above to ensure you are getting the best-possible CDP.
Your customer experience strategy will always be the best indicator of what CDP to choose. Whatever your “north star” of customer experience is, use it — along with the information above — to guide your decision. When you connect your vision to the right CDP, it can power the types of customer experiences that will strengthen and grow your business.
How to choose a customer data platform (CDP)
The key to making a confident decision about your CDP is to use a structured evaluation process.
1. Identify stakeholders
The first step in choosing a CDP is determining who must be involved in the decision-making process. Customary stakeholders include representatives from marketing, sales, and customer success teams. Additionally, team members who will use your CDP daily, manage those working in your CDP, or analyze reports that come from your CDP should also have an opportunity to be involved. Getting their input early can improve adoption later on.
2. Outline your use cases
Writing down a list of your needs can help you narrow your CDP vendors to fit exactly what you’re looking for. Here are a few common use cases to get you started:
- Get a 360-degree customer view. One of the many perks of using a CDP is its ability to centralize your data in one location. Being able to examine customer data at a holistic level and drill down into the details can reveal insights you may not have uncovered through disjointed reports. Plus, you can immediately put that data to use in marketing campaigns, customer success workflows, and sales conversations.
- Create personalized experiences. Audiences want highly curated marketing and sales experiences. CDPs allow you to interact with buyers at every stage of the journey through tailored content and personalized communications. The best CDPs offer actionable, real-time insights for B2C and B2B organizations.
- Improve multichannel or omnichannel marketing. There are many ways to engage with customers ー ads, email marketing, in-app notifications, and more. With a CDP, you can communicate with customers across multiple channels and track their responses, streamlining a consistent experience wherever they find you.
- Consolidate analytics. Digging through analytics on several channels or platforms takes time. CDPs collect and store online and offline data from different sources to equip you with better analytics.
- Manage data. Privacy and security are a top priority for every company. GDPR and CCPA-compliant CDPs can help companies adhere to current and future data privacy regulations.
3. Identify which tools you need
At this point, you’ll need to assess your tech stack. On the front end, your CDP should be able to connect to relevant customer data sources like CRMs, business intelligence (BI) tools, or data warehouses.
On the back end, your CDP should be able to integrate with downstream systems so you can personalize your messaging, sales, and customer support delivery. Look for integrations with advertising platforms, customer success or live chat tools, or customer engagement tools.
Read through CDP vendors’ API docs or ask sales engineers to clarify which APIs are already built and which ones you may need to develop yourself. Significant integration projects tax resources upfront and open the door to constant update requests in the future. Ideally, the CDP you choose should integrate with the tools you already use.
It’s especially important to talk with your stakeholders at this stage. They may bring up other possible connections to your CDP or other preferred features you hadn’t considered. Add any new requirements to your list.
4. Set priorities
No single CDP will check every box, so it’s critical to prioritize the features you need most. For instance, meeting GDPR and CCPA compliance standards might be more crucial to your business than having a built-in API for a more obscure platform your team uses. Or maybe outstanding customer service or a network of excellent implementation partners are non-negotiables for your team.
Categorize your requirements as must-haves, nice-to-haves, and nonessentials. It can be challenging to make those calls but consider the relative value each requirement would bring in the future. CDP vendors’ pricing pages can serve as good inspiration. If anything on the page jumps out as a mission-critical feature, put it in the must-have section.
5. Compare vendors
Now it’s time to transform your priorities and requirements into an evaluation matrix. Start by creating a table with requirements as rows and vendors as columns. Next, establish a scoring system 一 it can be as simple as a rating from one to five.
Ask your stakeholders to rate each CDP’s ability to meet your requirements as your team reads reviews, peruses CDP comparison pages, and attends demos. When you tally up the scores, the CDPs that meet your highest priority requirements 一 and some of your nice-to-haves 一 should come out on top.
6. Make your selection
When your vendor matrix is filled out, schedule a discussion with your stakeholders. Review the vendors that best meet your requirements, listen to people’s feedback, and revisit CDP vendors to get specific questions answered if needed. You can also talk to finance about your budget and find out whether you need to make a stronger business case.
Ask IT about the feasibility of implementing a CDP with in-house resources. If you’re not prepared to do that, ask CDP vendors whether they have a services team or work with preferred partners. Carefully examine case studies to substantiate those projects’ successes.
Going through this six-step process may seem lengthy, but making a final decision will be much more straightforward for you and your team when you’re armed with the appropriate information.
Transform your customer experience with a real-time CDP
Companies need CDPs for a variety of reasons — from greater personalization, to enhanced data analytics, to better data management. Pinpointing those reasons, determining which are most important, and mapping requirements to available options will help you find the right CDP for your business faster.
Adobe’s Real-Time CDP can help you turn data into loyal customers. It allows you to build enriched, privacy-ready consumer and account profiles that automatically update as more data is collected. And with hundreds of prebuilt connections, you can go from setup to data distribution in a matter of hours. Real-Time CDP is also equipped with a preset governance framework, ensuring privacy and compliance.
Check out this platform overview or take an interactive tour to learn more about how Adobe Real-Time CDP can revolutionize your go-to-market motion.
