Customer Data Platform

Customers have become accustomed to seeing exactly the right offer, at the right time and through the right channel. To achieve this, an organization needs to have a 360º view of its customers, and a consistent customer experience across all channels and a personalized message are essential. However, this is nowhere near enough to make you distinctive as an organization: it’s the bare minimum! If you wish to take the next step, you need to develop a customer data platform. This will help you to understand or even predict customer behavior. The optimal customer experience begins with data.

What is a customer data platform?

A customer data platform (CDP) is a central location where you bring all your customer data together and make it available to departments such as marketing, sales and customer service. The platform integrates all available customer data within your organization. In combination with relevant external data from sources such as Google, social media, CBS (Central Bureau of Statistics), the Chamber of Commerce and the KNMI (Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute), this gives you a 360º view of your customers so that you can understand and predict customer behavior.

You’re probably already taking steps to integrate or visually display data in reports and on dashboards. The CDP is the next step, and means actually using these data and making the best choices for your organization on the basis of them. Within the CDP, everyone gains the same clear view of the customer. You can use these customer data by integrating them with your marketing automation system and smart AI models, for example, making your marketing and sales activities data-driven.

The challenge of customer data

In most mid-sized organizations, relevant customer data are located in at least 25 different systems. In practice, this means that the data are stored in a fragmented way, and often are not shared and not integrated. Each department has its own systems, which it uses to perform analyses. The result is that, without a CDP, the sales, marketing and customer service departments each has its own view of the customer, and these views can differ significantly. As a result, the organization is unable to serve the customer optimally. For example, the situation is common where someone has just bought something new, but receives an offer for exactly the same product via display advertising a day later. This creates an inconsistent customer journey and sometimes even a touch point that leaves the customer with a negative experience.

A CDP puts the customer first and ensures that an clear customer view is created that is accessible to everyone. Embrace customer-focused thinking and gain and retain your customers by making them the right, personalized offer.

The benefits of a customer data platform

With a CDP you can also make a 360º customer view usable and intelligent and integrate it with your digital marketing platform or your CRM or ERP solution. This will strengthen your existing platforms and deliver more value for your business

The benefits of a CDP:

More valuable customers: turn your unknown and known prospects into engaged customers.
Increased cross-selling and up-selling: present customers with the right offer at the right time throughout the customer journey.
Improved retention and loyalty: customized communication thanks to your clear single customer view.
Reduced churn rates: when you use a CDP, your customer data are better organized, preventing your customers from dropping out.
Reduced cost per conversion: optimize conversions throughout the customer journey using automated workflows and AI-driven insights.
Predict customer behavior: you can predict customer needs with the built-in AI and machine learning models.
Better governance: with a CDP it’s easier to comply with privacy guidelines, because you have a clear view of customer data.