Types of Customer Data Platform and Which Would My Business Need?

Choosing the right Customer Data Platform (CDP) can be a challenging task. CDP often gets mistaken for other marketing tools that simply send emails and collect data from e-commerce sites. So, what exactly is a CDP and what do they have to offer?

What is a Customer Data Platform?

“A CDP is a marketing system that unifies a company’s customer data from marketing and other channels to enable customer modeling and optimize the timing and targeting of messages and offers.” - Gartner

 

"A Customer Data Platform is a packaged software that creates a persistent, unified customer database that is accessible to other systems.” - CDP Institute

Finding a singular definition of a Customer Data Platform is not easy, as different types of platforms exist in the market. So, before you think about the type of Customer Data Platform you need, what matters most is to have an overview of your own Martech stack and identify the gaps you need to fill.

Types of Customer Data Platforms

Now let’s take a closer look at the different types this growing, versatile and very useful big data technology has to offer. CDP Institute categories CDPs in three different types:

1. Access (or Data Access) CDP

It collects, links and stores customer information from multiple data sources. It’s suitable for companies that would like to unify all their customer data (online, offline, website, events, social and etc) to create a single profile for each customer. Information from these profiles can be used to improve sales, retention, and customer lifetime value. Another useful application of unified data is to make company systems “talk together”. This way you can save hundreds of man-hours when you automate processes that employees are still doing manually.

2. Analytics CDP

This type of CDP offers cutting-edge customer segmentation tools, in some cases even machine learning, predictive modeling, revenue attribution, and customer journey mapping capabilities. It allows a user to create new and highly customized audiences that can be uploaded to your preferred marketing tools to increase the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. This CDP is especially great for companies that work in fast-changing markets.

3. Campaign CDP 

Campaign CDPs focuses on improving your sales and marketing performance. The single customer profile here is used to elevate the customer experience across all your company touchpoints - personalized messages, real-time interactions, highly efficient product or content recommendations, outbound marketing campaigns and customer journey improvements. This type of CDP is the right choice for companies that want to perfect personalization and customer experience.

What Type of CDP Do You Need?

The kind of CDP your business requires depends on the specific goals that you want to achieve. Defining business use cases will give you more clarity on the capabilities needed in a CDP. It is also important to identify the kind of data that is relevant to your business to avoid over-collecting and storing data. Knowing who the end-user is will help to determine the level of skills needed to use the platform. In Southeast Asia, the demand for mobile and digital services have made business more aware that they can get better access to their customers by taking an integrated approach when it comes to delivering good customer experience. Prioritizing omnichannel marketing shows a shift in focus on keeping connected systems to build a single view of a customer.

“...companies are generating more data across multiple customer touch points, they are increasingly employing analytics to track performance, segment customers, and provide the deep insights that help shape strategy.” - McKinsey&Company

  For brands that engage in omnichannel marketing, look out for CDPs which integrate data from systems, channels, and devices (yes, we’re talking first, second and third-party data!) to deliver a consistent brand message to a customer. This type of CDP should further support marketing campaigns with analytics-driven insights that allow business users to understand customer behavior in a more comprehensive manner and fill the identified gaps in the customer experience journey.

Meiro Customer Data Platform and Where It All Fits

Meiro CDP brings together all the features of both a Data and Analytics customer data platform. We understand the need for an agile and flexible solution that fits into any part and at any time in your business strategy. Meiro CDP not only reduces friction in customer interactions but more importantly, integrates seamlessly with platforms in your current marketing stack by allowing enriched customer data to flow across various channels. A solution, built by a team of data experts, that is tailored for technical and non-technical users, we have put a focus on these core principles which help businesses plan for the future.

Data ownership and control

It does not matter if you are on-cloud, on-premise, hybrid, or using Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Adobe, IBM Cloud, Meiro’s Customer Data Platform offers flexible hosting models in key markets in Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Australia, Malaysia, and New Zealand. You have full ownership of your data which you can access 24/7.

Activating data seamlessly