TLDR:
Data is a huge component of today’s marketing landscape. Personalization and segmentation efforts have become more precise. One method to enhance the level of personalization is to pair a Customer Data Platform (CDP) with whatever personalization method works. Working together, a 360° view of a customer can be created. Personalization platforms, though, are not CDPs.
Personalization has been around long enough for prospects today not to notice it. In other words, it’s become mainstream.
Personalization happens as prospects and customers pass checkpoints called “touches” each time they engage with a brand. The preferences of those people are recorded and used in other personalization efforts down the funnel, getting better and better each time.
These efforts are doomed to fail if the data that feeds these attempts don’t carry any value. One way a marketer can get their hands on some data is to employ a CDP. CDPs create a 360° view of a customer through four key capabilities.
The first in this list is something called identity resolution. What this means is that it’s a database that considers the marketing platform landscape. It dynamically creates profiles and merges them together with data, such as customer/prospect contact information. Without identity resolution, a 360° view of the customer can’t be created. When it can’t be created, it leads to flawed data, which is blamed on the CDP.
A CDP also acts as a hub for customer intelligence efforts. It allows marketers to achieve a deeper level of insight into a customer or prospect. Just make certain that the CDP used does indeed have identity resolution capabilities or else the quality of the data will be terrible.
Further, CDPs also double as a source for outreach personalization. Without a CDP, a marketer’s attempts at personalization will be cut off from meaningful data.
In addition, enterprise-grade CDPs can be adjusted to fit the demands of any business using a wide variety of attributes, one of which is location. Marketers can then segment data accordingly.
But marketers should use caution when picking apart CDPs from personalization platforms—they’re not the same thing. If a vendor is offering a CDP without specific characteristics—identity resolution, for instance—it’s not actually a CDP. A normal CDP would have that.
Original article from MarTech Advisor on 10 June 1019.
