In this video session, we talk about what is a CDP (Customer Data Platform)? We also talk about DMP CRM and CIP.

Akshay Sura - Partner

9 Mar 2022

In this video session, we talk about what is a CDP (Customer Data Platform)? We also talk about DMP CRM and CIP.

Transcript

Note: The following is the transcription of the video produced by an automated transcription system. 

Hi, this is Akshay Sura from Konabos. Today we'll be talking about what is the CDP along with other terms have been turned down a lot in the in the industry. So DMP CRM, CIP. So today we'll be talking about what is a CDP. And how is it different from some of the other terms which is closely related to or miss, you know, misconstrued in some context. So, CDP stands for customer data platform. So, from the CDP Institute, they define it as packaged software that creates a persistent unified customer database that is accessible to other systems. So pre packaged or packaged software, essentially centralizes all of the customer information into one central place. So, you have a 360 view of the customer. And basically, making it available to other systems to consume it in order for them to act on it, act on the data that we've gathered and accumulated and unified. So, you could use these systems to analyze track, manage customer interactions, you could even do personalization, all of that based on the data which comes out of the CDP. CDP is primarily used for marketing efforts, the data inside of the CDP can be segmented. And at the end of the day, you're trying to just know more about the customer, you have. CDP needs customer data to function. So, without that, it can't really function. When we talk about customer data, privacy comes into play. So, there's a couple of terms we should go with CDPs primarily deal with first party data. What that means is that any infamous, first party data is all information you collect as a company about your customers. And you only use it for your company's efforts, a company's marketing efforts or sales efforts, you are directly responsible for this information you're getting from your customer.

So, things like you know, if I were to come purchase a product or a service, I sign up, I'd register I give you my information, I give you my information at the cart, I fill in a registration form a newsletter form, these are all first party data contacts between you and your customer. This could also this doesn't just have to be web based. This could also be their usage or interactions with you on a mobile app, you know, in store offline visits as well things which go into different systems like CRM, so anything to do with the customer, you can ingest it into the CDP to do what you need to do. third party data, on the other hand, is a little bit different. Typically, third party data is purchased or shared amongst businesses. It's based on you can't really put a finger on if it if he had an explicit consent from the customer to or a consumer to get the information. So, it's a little bit iffy on that front. Typically used to target users in terms of advertising personalization, basically able to generate revenue from these individuals. So, if you were to apply for a mortgage loan, for instance, you notice that you get information from land titles, you get information about people protecting things, services for your new home. So that that's basically third-party information, which other people are getting out of agreements with each other. Um, the first part of the CDP is to be able to collect and unify all of the first party information from other systems.

So, this could be from the emails, CRMs analytics, be how people interact and purchase from your commerce systems, social sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. So, this is all information that we ingest. So, we take it into the CDP. And to take out silos, right? So, when you're thinking about marketing efforts, there's so many other marketing efforts where things are happening. And CDP is a way to unify that all into one place, you have a better picture of your customer. So single source of truth for your first party customer data, basically. And the Unification is across channels and devices. So, it's agnostic, or it's not just for web or mobile. It's across all devices and channels. So, you have to remember that. The second part is with data management data management is gets a little bit tricky. Now that you have all the information inside your CDP, what do you do with it. So, you need to massage your data to look at traits and buckets, you can put your customer into in terms of the audience the personas they belong to, and show the information to the customer depending on what you think their intent is. So, in order for us to do that, we look at the customer as a whole. So, and then we act based on what we think the customer requires. From a data management, privacy, security of the customer data perspective, CDP also helps you really, really well. So now that you have everything in one place, when a GDPR, or CCPA, California Consumer Privacy Act request comes in saying hey, I'm XYZ, I need to know what you're storing.

Now CDP can help you because everything is centralized, not only do you know, for this individual, we store information, XYZ pieces of information, as well as it comes from systems one, five and nine, for instance. So, it's super important, it helps us control the data flow between different marketing systems. Also, knowing what the customer knowing the preferences of the customer, we can based on their consent, preferences if an external system so the the third part of this which we're going to get to is acting on the data that we have, we can tell those systems Hey, by the way, individual a has these consent preferences, so act accordingly. This is the only information I can give you. So, from an enforcement of data policies and regulations, it also helps you really well. Like I said, it helps you find an answer your customer inquiries about data compliance, so which is super important. From an activate, which is the final part of it. What is super important here is, we have you know, we got the information, we combined everything into you know, a structured profile of the customer, we know a lot about the customer. This is an ongoing process, it isn't like you do it once and you're done happens every day, every week, you know, it has to go through. Now it's the chance for us to give this information back to other marketing platforms and channels. So how do we do that? So, if you have an A B testing tool, a personalization tool, even a CRM for that matter and an analytic tool, you're doing social media campaigns, you could hook into the CDP data in order to get better insights about your customer. You're doing like an email campaign.

For instance, you could also utilize your CDP information in order to give personalized real time messaging to your customers so that they feel like oh, you know, this company really, really knows me. They understand exactly this is exactly what I was thinking about or looking for. So, it's super important. And it helps you do that. I'm coming to a different aspect of it. So, CDP is not a CRM is customer relationship. management tool. CDPs are like I said, very focused on marketing efforts. CRMs are very focused on sales. You know, they can interact with each other at different points, you know, Add the ingestion point or at the activation point for sure they could work off of each other. But at the end of the day, they are meant for two separate purposes. So, to build strong relationship with the customer, what you have to realize is though that CRMs don't aggregate and analyze data from multiple sources, CDP does that CDP's can collect information from anonymous as well as known customers where CRMs typically deal with leads potential customers and customers they know these people CDP's analyze lifetime customer behavior for as long as the customer is with you their journeys. C. CRM is primarily focused on forecasting like sales related stuff. So that's something to call out. CDP so not a DMP. So, another term, so DMP stands for data management platform.

And the differences again, like I said, CDP is mainly focused on marketing. DMP is very, very focused on advertising. Like I said, CDP's primarily deal with first party data DMPS primarily deal with third party data, so anonymous, focusing on advertising, advertising, related efforts, campaigns related to, you know, gaining new customers finding more leads, that's what they're focused on. So that's something to remember, the, the data collected by DMPS is often like, like I said, because it's very anonymous, we retain it for a shorter period of time, whereas in a CDP we collect an aggregate for the lifetime of the customer. Just the nature of the third parties, it's based on cookies, primarily, right? So, the cookies being drive just to kind of see, and what profiles and integrations we put into place in order for us to help that advertising pipeline is super important. Another time, so Customer Intelligence platforms also deal with third party also deal with anonymous data, they sometimes deal with the first party data as well. It really depends on what the source of it is. CIPS probably are, you know, machine learning related, where they're predicting models and recommendations based on the data you ingest, basically trying to get us to a point where we can have actionable insights on what we could do. In order to maximize a specific effort, whether it be advertising or sales or marketing. They are not specific to a just a marketing, they could be used in customer relationship management systems, as well as sales and marketing. So super important for us to do that. Typically, you would use a CIP to gain communication between data and intelligence amongst all the systems to basically do better. But it enhances a CDP and the CDP efforts, but it isn't a CDP.

Another common misconception is, CDP is not a personalization tool for that matter, it is not a tool to do AV testing, it is not a tool to do a bunch of other things, which we'll get into. It's super important to call this out because CDP's purpose is not the tool base, although some providers provide you with the tools on top of your CDP to do this, the core functionality is to collect aggregate all the information for a customer so you get a 360-degree view and provide that to other systems so that they can act on it. Key benefits again, so we want to avoid data silos for customers. We want to collect first party information, we want to know that 360 view of the customer all marketing channels and all marketing efforts can be unified using the CDP to provide a better customer experience. So, connecting online to offline customer segmentation. If you want to do personalization, lead scoring a B testing, you want to automate your Omni channel you want to improve your email delivery and the content specific to a customer. You know, basically improving the customer value to your company. CDP is it and it's super important to do that. Hopefully we've covered everything we need to know about a CDP what the CDP is the benefits of a CDP how it's not a CRMC IP. So, it's important to know these and this is a good way for us to kind of understand the value of a CDP there's a lot of articles out there which can give you a lot more information. There's a handful of really good providers for CDP. So please do look around in the market. If you need any help or if you want any questions answered, please reach out to us and we'll be more than happy to answer your questions. Thanks again for watching.

If you have any questions, please get in touch with me. @akshaysura13 on Twitter or on Slack.


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Akshay Sura

Akshay is a nine-time Sitecore MVP and a two-time Kontent.ai. In addition to his work as a solution architect, Akshay is also one of the founders of SUGCON North America 2015, SUGCON India 2018 & 2019, Unofficial Sitecore Training, and Sitecore Slack.

Akshay founded and continues to run the Sitecore Hackathon. As one of the founding partners of Konabos Consulting, Akshay will continue to work with clients to lead projects and mentor their existing teams.


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