The digital era has ushered in an exciting new chapter in consumer experiences, but it can be challenging for organizations to deliver the seamless customer journey across various analog and digital touchpoint that consumers now expect.
To remain competitive, organizations are seeking to engage customers with highly personalized marketing messages and recommendations, and to provide the right information at the right time.
However, many organizations struggle to do this because customer information is often distributed across several different departments in databases that are often on-prem and in the cloud. This makes it difficult to create fully rounded customer profiles and manage customer journeys.
Any organization struggling these challenges should familiarize themselves with fast-growing and quickly-evolving market for Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) to understand what products and services are available in the market, what these can deliver, and which are best suited to their organizations
CDPs can help organizations deal with the common challenges of creating a 360-degree view of customers because these products and services are specifically designed to aggregate and analyze various sources of customer information for the purpose of enhancing marketing strategies and efficiency.
In other words, CDPs can consolidate customer and/or consumer identity data, purchase history, product searches and reviews, social media activities, and other related information from all the different sources of information. Many CDPs include market analytics, reporting, and integrations with marketing automation solutions. Typically, the most successful deployments are based on CDPs that are as flexible and adaptable as possible.
Organizations engaging with customers should seek to find the most effective and efficient ways to build customer profiles in compliance with privacy and data protection regulation, link customer data to the correct profiles, assign customers to market segments, support predictions and decisions, and continually refine profiles to keep them as up to date and as accurate as possible.
There is a clear trend and necessity for many organizations to move from third-party data to first-party customer data. This is one of the key drivers when it comes to customer data management.
— Roland Bühler, Fellow Analyst, KuppingerCole Analysts.
Because we understand the importance of effective customer data management, and because we are committed to helping your business succeed, KuppingerCole has a great deal of content available in a variety of formats.
Research
Get an overview of the CDP market, learn to identify key functionality, discover innovative approaches, and get expert guidance on how to find the CDP solution that best fits your organization’s needs by reading the recently published Leadership Compass on Customer Data Platforms, which evaluates a range of solutions in terms of security, functionality, deployment models, interoperability and usability.
Discover other technologies besides CDPs that can contribute to improving customer interactions by reading this Leadership Brief entitled: Beyond Marketing: The Future of Customer Interaction.
Not only is managing customer and consumer information important, but most commercial organizations also want to manage and improve communication flows. To find out what products are available to do that using machine learning (ML) and chatbots, have a look at this Market Compass on Conversational AI Building Platforms.
Explore the use of chatbots in marketing automation even further by having a look at this Leadership Compass which looks at Marketing Chatbots and GDPR, which examines how chatbots are used, the privacy implications of those uses, and how to ensure your organization complies with data protection regulations such as the EU’s GDPR.
The topic of GDPR considerations in the context of the GDPR is explored even further in his Leadership Brief on Machine Learning, Marketing, and Privacy.
Staying with the role of artificial intelligence (AI), these technologies are increasingly being used to improve marketing messages and create new applications for interacting with consumers and customers to offer them added value. To learn more about this topic, read this Leadership Brief on The Limits of AI in Marketing Automation, which explores what AI can and can’t currently deliver.
When it comes to customer relationships, the most important considerations are convenience, relevance, and trust. To learn more about these focus areas and the role of technology, have a look at this Leadership Brief entitled: Top 3 Initiatives to Improve CX and Customer Journeys.
For a wider perspective on technologies that support baseline features for analyzing customer behavior, and integrating with customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation systems, have a look at this Leadership Compass on CIAM Platforms.
Audio/video
Enterprises are increasingly finding value in CDPs, which unify sources and views of customer data from multiple systems. CIAM solutions are also widespread and are diversifying their features sets. For a discussion on the intersections and differences between CDP and CIAM, watch this panel session from this year’s EIC on CIAM and Customer Data Platforms.
Identity Fabrics support the shift-left in IAM thinking from only managing applications to providing a consistent set of identity services for the developers of digital services. To find out where Identity Fabrics stand today and whether specific variant are needed for consumer identities to cater for CIAM and CDP use cases, look at this other panel discussion from this year’s EIC on Identity Fabrics: The Mesh and the Factory for Identity Services.
Webinars
Find out why new CDPs fill a gap left by other marketing technology solutions, learn best practices for CDP adoption, and discover how CDPs can impact customer engagement, strengthen competitive advantages, and address privacy issues by looking at this Webinar entitled: Explore the Cutting Edge of Data-Driven Customer Experience.
Whitepapers
CDPs are one of the key elements for delivering the customer experience that people expect today that is flexible and convenient, but with the required level of identity proofing and strong authentication. For more on this topic, have at look at this Whitepaper on Success in the Digital Age: Put Identity & Access at the Forefront.
Tech Investment
Organizations investing in technologies to support customer data management, can have a look at some of the related technology solutions that we have evaluated: